Oxford Instruments Asylum Research, the technology leader in Atomic Force Microscopy, has received the prestigious 2014 Microscopy Today Innovation Award for the development of blueDrive™ Photothermal Excitation.
blueDrive, an option available exclusively for Asylum’s Cypher™ Atomic Force Microscopes (AFMs), makes tapping mode imaging remarkably simple, incredibly stable, and strikingly accurate. It replaces the conventional piezoacoustic excitation mechanism of the AFM cantilever by using a blue laser to directly excite the cantilever photothermally. This results in an ideal cantilever drive response in both air and liquids, which provides significant performance and ease of use benefits for tapping mode imaging.
“We are proud to be honored with the 2014 Microscopy Today Innovation Award,” said Aleks Labuda, Asylum Research R&D Scientist and lead blueDrive developer. “We continually hear from our customers that blueDrive has made tapping mode imaging, the most widely used scan mode in AFM, easier and more stable. It is very exciting to have this new product recognized as a significant AFM innovation by the microscopy industry.”
Added Roger Proksch, President of Asylum Research, “We are thrilled to have received this award from Microscopy Today, a publication of the Microscopy Society of America. We are committed to making innovative products like blueDrive that give our users unmatched performance and reliable results, all while making the instrument a pleasure to use every time they sit down to make a measurement. Asylum’s mission, now and since the beginning, is to make the best AFMs on the planet. This award affirms that we are still on that path.”