For years, scientists have had an itch they couldn’t
scratch. Even with the best microscopes and spectrometers, it’s been difficult
to study and identify molecules at the so-called mesoscale, a region of matter
that ranges from 10 to 1000 nanometers in size. Now, with the help of broadband
infrared light from the Advanced Light Source (ALS) synchrotron at the U.S.
Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab),
researchers have developed a broadband imaging technique that looks inside this
realm with unprecedented sensitivity and range.