It is well known that optical instruments are limited by diffraction, this limit was originally determined by E. Abbe, it is only ~ l/2 or 200 nm for visible light (l is the wavelength of light). After the achievement of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) by G.Binnig and H.Rohrer in 1982, various form of scanning probe microscopy have been developed. The necessity to characterize materials using optical methods at sub-micronic scale with more precision is the motivation to combine optical microscopy with high resolution scanning probe methods, the "Abbe barrier" was completely broken by the resulting technique: the Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy (SNOM). During the last decade, SNOM, using various configurations, in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum have demonstrated very high optical resolution. Most of the time the sub-wavelength resolution is achieved by sending or collecting the light trough a small aperture in opaque screen. In our laboratory, we have developed another idea. Instead of using a small aperture in metallic screen, we have used an apertureless metallic tip which have proven to be efficient in terms of resolution.
New results and previous studies :
| 1 IN
THE IR DOMAIN, we have obtain very good résolution on gold surface.
2 METALLIC
NANOSTRUCTURES, new set-ups allow us to study the interaction of electromagnetic
wave with such structures..
|
Tip's photography, the line is 500 microns long. |
Team
Jean Claude Rivoal, Professor
at université P. et M. Curie, Paris, France.
Lionel Aigouy, Permanent
Researcher, CNRS, France.
Gianni Carbone, PhD Student, Italy
Sebastien Ducourtieux,
PhD Student, France
Samuel Grésillon,
PhD student, France
Ahmed Lahrech, PhD student,
Moroco
Bruno Zappone, PhD Student, Italy