National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 3(116), p. 753-758, 2019
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Significance Spatial relationships between organic matter and minerals are necessary for understanding the formation and evolution of organic matter during aqueous and thermal alteration in their parent bodies, as well as preaccretional history. Infrared spectroscopy is a powerful tool to analyze the molecular structures of organic matter and identification of minerals. However, its spatial resolution is limited due to the diffraction limit. Recently, the atomic force microscopy (AFM) based IR nanospectroscopy was developed and applied in various scientific fields to overcome the diffraction limit of IR. We applied the AFM-based IR nanospectroscopy to carbonaceous chondrites and studied organic-mineral associations at the ∼30 nm spatial resolution.