Issue 1, 2019

Physical magnification of objects

Abstract

For hundreds of years, scientists have aimed photons, electrons, and X-rays at objects in order to obtain magnified images of them, revealing their micro- and nanoscale architecture, and revolutionizing every branch of the sciences. Recently a new modality of magnification was discovered – physical magnification of objects. For objects with certain properties, such as biological specimens, one can synthesize throughout them a dense, even network of swellable polymer, so that further chemical processing steps will isotropically expand the polymer, and thus the object, manyfold in physical dimension. We here explore the principles governing this new modality of magnification, such as the ability to use inexpensive, ubiquitous imaging hardware to perform high-resolution imaging of objects, and the ability to decrowd molecules within an object for detailed in situ chemical analysis.

Graphical abstract: Physical magnification of objects

Article information

Article type
Focus
Submitted
06 8月 2018
Accepted
02 10月 2018
First published
02 10月 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Mater. Horiz., 2019,6, 11-13

Physical magnification of objects

E. S. Boyden, Mater. Horiz., 2019, 6, 11 DOI: 10.1039/C8MH00931G

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements