ABSTRACT
Discerning and understanding structure-function relationships is often predicated on our ability to measure these properties on a variety of length scales. Fundamentally, nanotechnology and nanoscience might be arguably based on the precept that we need to understand how interactions occur at the atomic and molecular length scales if we are to truly understand how to manipulate processes and structures and ultimately control physical/chemical/electronic properties on more bulk macroscopic length scales. There is a clear need to understanding the pathways and functional hierarchy involved in the development of
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complex architectures from their simple building blocks. In order to study such phenomena at such a basic level, we need tools capable of performing measurements on these same length scales. If we can couple these capabilities with the ability to map these attributes against a real-space image of such structures, in real-time and hopefully, under real-world conditions, this would provide the researcher with a particularly powerful and compelling set of approaches to characterizing interactions and structures.
