Asylum Research seems a strange name for a business making microscopes to examine samples on an atomic scale and producing stunningly detailed and colourful 3D images using a probe thinner than a human hair.

Managing director Dr Shelley Wilkins is used to fielding questions about the name.

She said: "It was started by former employees of US company Digital Instruments, now Veeco. Their company was taken over and the scientists didn't like the new company which bought them, so they set up on their own.

"It was like asylum for those who were unhappy after the takeover - they wanted to do good science."

The founders dedicated themselves to honing the power of atomic force microscopes, which can expand a human hair, tooth enamel, a potential polymer coating, or an individual bacterium to create images with more than just visual power.

The mass of detailed information revealed by the microscopes can include elasticity or reaction to stress - useful to a wide range of industries, from drugs to plastics.

Dr Wilkins was head-hunted earlier this year after completing a doctorate at Oxford and becoming a Fellow of Wolfson College, to set up the company's UK subsidiary to cope with the rapidly expanding market in atomic force microscopes, which operate at the scale of individual molecules.

She said: "When I started my doctorate in 1998, atomic force microscope technology had been around for about ten years.

"We had one in the chemistry department lab and everyone came to me with samples, because no one else could use it. Now there are at least ten."

Unlike optical microscopes, atomic force microscopes do not use light waves to see' the samples.

Dr Wilkins explained: "If your particles are smaller than the width of a light wave, you will not be able to see them. There is always scanning electron microscopy, but that just shows what the surface looks like.

Detector "Atomic force microscopes have a probe that interacts with the surface and feels it, like a finger. There is a mirror on the back of the probe off which we shine a laser, and that acts as a detector. It's like an old-fashioned record player with a stylus.

"It can detect the properties of the sample - for instance, it can test a miniature circuit on a computer hard disk. If you look at a biological cell, it can detect a malignant or benign tumour.

"It's not a routine tool, because you have to be able to interpret the information, but it can be used to unravel one strand of DNA or a protein. By looking at the way it comes unstuck, we can tell what kind of protein it is.

"For instance, if you have marine algae sticking to a wall, it can look at the slime that holds it on and then we can make something to remove it. The potential is limitless.

"Next week we are giving demonstrations on how to detect malignant and benign tumours, looking at contact lens material and DNA quantum dots."

Each instrument costs at least £100,000, so researchers are finding it useful to visit Asylum Research's offices at the Oxford Centre for Innovation in Mill Street, to try out the microscopes and discover whether they could help to solve a particular scientific problem.

Most of the microscopes go to universities, but they are increasingly used in the pharmaceutical sector and in the research labs of the semiconductor and plastic coatings industries.

Asylum Research is owned by the founders, and was set up without venture capital funding, so is not beholden to financiers.

Dr Wilkins says the informal, relaxed atmosphere of the rebellious start-up days has persisted.

She added: "It's based in a fantastic building in Santa Barbara in California. Everyone socialises there and there are poker tables, which means that everyone communicates really well.

"All the scientists have shares, so that we all benefit when the company does well."

n Contact: Asylum Research, 01865 812075, www.asylumresearch.co.uk