Molecular Scale Imaging with a Smooth Superlens
Abstract
We demonstrate a smooth and low loss silver (Ag) optical superlens capable of resolving features at 1/12th of the illumination wavelength with high fidelity. This is made possible by utilizing state-of-the-art nanoimprint technology and intermediate wetting layer of germanium (Ge) for the growth of flat silver films with surface roughness at sub-nanometer scales. Our measurement of the resolved lines of 30nm half-pitch shows a full-width at half-maximum better than 37nm, in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. The development of this unique optical superlens lead promise to parallel imaging and nanofabrication in a single snapshot, a feat that are not yet available with other nanoscale imaging techniques such as atomic force microscope or scanning electron microscope.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0906.1213,
title = {Molecular Scale Imaging with a Smooth Superlens},
author = {Pratik Chaturvedi and Wei Wu and VJ Logeeswaran and Zhaoning Yu and M. Saif Islam and S. Y. Wang and R. Stanley Williams and Nicholas Fang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.1213},
year = {2009}
}