NanoInnovation: What Every Manager Needs to Know

4Imaging the Unseen: Viewing Structures Smaller than Light Waves

Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible.

– Frank Gaines

When it comes to nanoimaging, seeing is achieving.

Nanoscale imaging – the ability to view structures and processes at the nanoscale – is a core innovation that drives virtually all other nanoinnovations. As a manager, you should have a basic understanding of how nanoimaging works because so much depends on our ability to view this unseen world. Nanoimaging is used to design semiconductors and car engines, to engineer new types of materials, and study the safety of nanoparticles. Nanoimaging helps confirm the quality and consistency of nanopores in fuel injectors and desalination filters. Nanoimages aid the study of bacteria and viruses, and help diagnose and treat disease at the cell level.

Nanoimaging – better known as nanoscale microscopy – is still evolving. Every form of microscopy, from optical and electron microscopes to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), is advancing rapidly. If you want to understand what is happening in nanoinnovation, it helps to have a sense of the different types of nanoimaging systems, and what is involved in viewing and manipulating the incredibly tiny structures of the nanoworld.

4.1 What Nano Images Reveal

If you surf the Web, you'll see thousands of nanoscale images displayed in online galleries. Many of these images are truly remarkable. They show us what Nature and humans can engineer at the nanoscale, ...