Advertisement

If you have an ACS member number, please enter it here so we can link this account to your membership. (optional)

ACS values your privacy. By submitting your information, you are gaining access to C&EN and subscribing to our weekly newsletter. We use the information you provide to make your reading experience better, and we will never sell your data to third party members.

ENJOY UNLIMITED ACCES TO C&EN

Analytical Chemistry

Microscope sees buried objects through superlens

September 18, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 38

[+]Enlarge
Credit: Science
Credit: Science

Scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) can visualize minuscule surface features, such as those on semiconductor chips, that are blurs at best in ordinary optical microscopes. Now, toolmakers at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, in Martinsried, Germany, and at the University of Texas, Austin, have combined a so-called superlens with SNOM's tip to create an instrument they say "allows for subwavelength-scale resolved imaging of buried objects" (Science 2006, 313, 1595). With illumination from an infrared laser set at a wavelength of about 11 µm, the probe scans above a submicrometer-thick silicon carbide superlens placed over a gold layer riddled with a test pattern of different-sized holes. Electromagnetic field signals from the gold layer are focused upward by the superlens and picked up by the rastering probe. The researchers showed they can generate clear images of 1,200- and 860-nm holes and vague outlines of 540-nm holes (shown), which are one-twentieth as large as the illuminating IR wavelength. With other superlens-wavelength combos, the technique should enable "high-resolution optical imaging of various man-made or biological nanostructures," the researchers say.

Article:

This article has been sent to the following recipient:

0 /1 FREE ARTICLES LEFT THIS MONTH Remaining
Chemistry matters. Join us to get the news you need.