Sub-50 nm optical imaging in ambient air with 10× objective lens enabled by hyper-hemi-microsphere

Guangxing Wu; Yan Zhou; Minghui Hong

doi:10.1038/s41377-023-01091-9

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Sub-50 nm optical imaging in ambient air with 10× objective lens enabled by hyper-hemi-microsphere

Original Articles

- Sub-50 nm optical imaging in ambient air with 10× objective lens enabled by hyper-hemi-microsphere
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 12, Issue 3, Pages: 398-408(2023)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, 4 Engineering Drive 3, Singapore, 117576, Singapore
  2.School of Aerospace Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China
  3.Present address: Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, 518055, China
- Author bio：
  
  Minghui Hong (elehmh@nus.edu.sg)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-023-01091-9
  CLC：
- Published：31 March 2023，
  
  Published Online：28 February 2023，
  
  Received：23 August 2022，
  
  Revised：5 January 2023，
  
  Accepted：1 February 2023
Scan for full text
Wu, G. X., Yan, Z. & Hong, M. H. Sub-50 nm optical imaging in ambient air with 10× objective lens enabled by hyper-hemi-microsphere. Light: Science & Applications, 12, 398-408 (2023).
DOI：

Wu, G. X., Yan, Z. & Hong, M. H. Sub-50 nm optical imaging in ambient air with 10× objective lens enabled by hyper-hemi-microsphere. Light: Science & Applications, 12, 398-408 (2023). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-023-01091-9.

摘要

Abstract

Optical microsphere nanoscope has great potential in the inspection of integrated circuit chips for semiconductor industry and morphological characterization in biology due to its superior resolving power and label-free characteristics. However

its resolution in ambient air is restricted by the magnification and numerical aperture (NA) of microsphere. High magnification objective lens is required to be coupled with microsphere for nano-imaging beyond the diffraction limit. To overcome these challenges

in this work

high refractive index hyper-hemi-microspheres with tunable magnification up to 10× are proposed and realized by accurately tailoring their thickness with focused ion beam (FIB) milling. The effective refractive index is put forward to guide the design of hyper-hemi-microspheres. Experiments demonstrate that the imaging resolution and contrast of a hyper-hemi-microsphere with a higher magnification and larger NA excel those of a microsphere in air. Besides

the hyper-hemi-microsphere could resolve ~50 nm feature with higher image fidelity and contrast compared with liquid immersed high refractive index microspheres. With a hyper-hemi-microsphere composed microscale compound lens configuration

sub-50 nm optical imaging in ambient air is realized by only coupling with a 10× objective lens (NA = 0.3)

which enhances a conventional microscope imaging power about an order of magnitude.

关键词

Keywords

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