By
Jeremy Duda
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Funds to be shared with NASA for creation of new
A researcher at the University of Arizona's Optical Sciences Center has received a $1.1 million grant for developing technology that will allow scientists to analyze small terrestrial samples from planets in the solar system.
Dror Sarid, an optical sciences professor, was one of the researchers selected by a Congressional committee to receive the three-year grant, which will be shared by Sarid and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The grant will fund the technology to analyze terrestrial samples from space missions of a nanometer-scale structure. A nanometer is roughly the size of three atoms.
"We will now be able to see how it looks and what it is composed of," Sarid said.
The equipment being designed will combine two already existing technologies, atomic force microscopy and Raman spectography, to determine topographical structure and chemical composition.
Atomic force spectography uses a very small needle hovering above a sample, and projects an image of its topography by measuring the needle's vertical motion.
Raman spectography determines the type of substance being analyzed by shining light on a large sample, then measures the change in the light's frequency.
The marriage of these techniques will produce a new, innovative method of analyzing terrestrial samples, Sarid said. Most samples range from one millimeter to one centimeter in size.
The new technology will be the first to produce clear images of samples that are only a few nanometers.
There are plans by NASA and JPL to use this technology in a device that could be sent to Mars. The device will analyze matter on the surface of the planet and send images of it back to Earth. JPL will receive about half of the grant, leaving Sarid with $570,000.
Sarid's request for the grant was sponsored in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman Jim Kolbe, R-Arizona.
"If a grant request comes from a professor at the UA, Congressman Kolbe will support it unconditionally," said Keith Rosenblum, a spokesman for Kolbe. "Anything that comes from the UA we go to bat for."
Sarid's proposal was selected from a pool of about 1200 other candidates from 30 states. Slightly less that 50 percent of the requests came from universities.
