Jul 28 2010
JILA researchers have demonstrated the usage of infrared laser light for heating water in small sample containers (nano bathtubs) quickly and accurately.
The nano bathtubs are heated for microscopy analysis of the biochemistry of nanoparticles and molecules. JILA is an institution operated by the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Infrared laser light heats the water in nano bathtub for JILA research on individual RNA molecules
According to the paper ‘Real-Time Infrared Overtone Laser Control of Temperature in Picoliter H2O Samples: Nanobathtubs for Single Molecule Microscopy’, the new technique is more controllable and less affected by altering chemistry or damaging expensive optics, compared to the traditional methods that use electric currents to heat microscope samples and optics in bulk. This non-contact heating of tiny particles is likely to allow new experimentations with single molecules.
The bathtubs of the JILA comprise 35 picoliters of water filled over a glass slide. Using an infrared laser light, a nano-scale column of water is heated. When the laser beam is moved, the column warms the single RNA molecules on the slide. The samples are mounted on an inverted fluorescence microscope, which is utilized for studying the tagged RNA molecules’ folding. The researchers heated and examined the folding of molecules at the same time, and then compared results from laser heating with the measurements from bulk heating.