 This choice can be justified by the increasing need over the past several years for characterization on a nanometric scale in water, especially the characterization of biological objects such as membranes or lipid bilayers but also the characterization of organic films such as polyelectrolytes layers, for example. Current techniques of characterization in water are scarce, relatively complex to work, and above all do not provide images of the samples in real time. During 2007, Nanolane, crossed the threshold by launching new Surfs on the market – ‘Immersion Surfs’ which already enabled seeing structures of nanometric dimensions in water. At the end of 2008, a second step was overcome with the development of a nanometric calibration standard especially for measurements in water. The latter is made of a succession of 7 layers of nanometric thickness placed on an ‘Immersion Surf’. At present, the product in-house validation stage is coming to an end. The performance of the measure in water lives up to expectations with repeatability lower than 0.3nm. The 3D Sarfus image shows the first immersion measurement done using Sarfus. It is a 2nm thick organic layer of octyltrisiloxane (OTS), elaborated by soft-lithography technique (MP Valignat, O.Théodoly-Lannes, INSERM–Marseille, France). Several trials are being run to test the detection and measurement limits on samples which have been carefully prepared by a dozen European research teams. image available at : Applications / Life Sciences / Soft lithography
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