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Optical Silver Superlens Imaging Below the Diffraction Limit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Hyesog Lee,
Yi Xiong,
Nicholas Fang,
Werayut Srituravanich,
Stephane Durant,
Muralidhar Ambati,
Cheng Sun and
Xiang Zhang
Hyesog Lee
Affiliation:
hyesog@hotmail.com, UC Berkeley, Mechanical Engineering, 243 Hesse Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States, 510-643-4972, 510-642-6163
Yi Xiong
Affiliation:
yixiong@berkeley.edu, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720, United States
Nicholas Fang
Affiliation:
nicfang@uiuc.edu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, 61801, United States
Werayut Srituravanich
Affiliation:
swerayut@ucla.edu, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720, United States
Stephane Durant
Affiliation:
durant@berkeley.edu, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720, United States
Muralidhar Ambati
Affiliation:
murli@berkeley.edu, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720, United States
Cheng Sun
Affiliation:
chengsun@me.berkeley.edu, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720, United States
Xiang Zhang
Affiliation:
xiang@berkeley.edu, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720, United States
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Abstract

Conventional optical imaging systems cannot resolve the features smaller than approximately half the size of the working wavelength, called the diffraction limit. The superlens theory predicts that a flat lens made of an ideal material with negative permittivity and/or permeability is able to resolve features much smaller than working wavelength through the restoration of evanescent waves. We experimentally demonstrated the superlens concept for the first time using a thin silver slab in a quasi-static regime; a 60nm half-pitch object was imaged with 365nm illumination wavelength, λ/6 resolution, and the imaging of 50nm half-pitch object under the same light source, λ/7, was also reported. Here, we present mainly experimental studies of near-field optical superlens imaging.

Keywords

Agopticalnanoscale

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