Differential near-field scanning optical microscopy

Aydogan Ozcan; Ertugrul Cubukcu; Alberto Bilenca; Kenneth B Crozier; Brett E Bouma; Federico Capasso; Guillermo J Tearney

doi:10.1021/nl062110v

Differential near-field scanning optical microscopy

Nano Lett. 2006 Nov;6(11):2609-16. doi: 10.1021/nl062110v.

Authors

Aydogan Ozcan¹, Ertugrul Cubukcu, Alberto Bilenca, Kenneth B Crozier, Brett E Bouma, Federico Capasso, Guillermo J Tearney

Affiliation

¹ Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA. aozcan@mgh.harvard.edu

PMID: 17090100
DOI: 10.1021/nl062110v

Abstract

We theoretically and experimentally illustrate a new apertured near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) technique, termed differential NSOM (DNSOM). It involves scanning a relatively large (e.g., 0.3-2 mum wide) rectangular aperture (or a detector) in the near-field of an object and recording detected power as a function of the scanning position. The image reconstruction is achieved by taking a two-dimensional derivative of the recorded power map. Unlike conventional apertured NSOM, the size of the rectangular aperture/detector does not determine the resolution in DNSOM; instead, the resolution is practically determined by the sharpness of the corners of the rectangular aperture/detector. Principles of DNSOM can also be extended to other aperture/detector geometries such as triangles and parallelograms.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Equipment Design
Equipment Failure Analysis
Microscopy, Scanning Probe / instrumentation
Microscopy, Scanning Probe / methods*
Nanotechnology / instrumentation
Nanotechnology / methods*
Particle Size
Sensitivity and Specificity
Surface Properties