INCREASING THROUGHPUT OF A NEAR-FIELD OPTICAL FIBER PROBE OVER 1000 TIMES BY THE USE OF A TRIPLE-TAPERED STRUCTURE

We fabricated a new probe with extremely high throughput introducing a triple-tapered structure to reduce the loss in a tapered core, to focus the light, and to excite effectively the HE11 mode. A focused ion beam and selective chemical etching were used for fabrication. Over a 1000-fold increase in the throughput of the triple-tapered probe with the aperture diameter D<100 nm was realized in comparison with the conventional single-tapered probe. Furthermore, due to the third taper with a small cone angle, the localized optical near field on the triple-tapered apertured probe with D=60 nm has been confirmed.

[1]  Novotny,et al.  Light propagation in a cylindrical waveguide with a complex, metallic, dielectric function. , 1994, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[2]  M. Ohtsu,et al.  Tailoring a high‐transmission fiber probe for photon scanning tunneling microscope , 1996 .

[3]  Daniel Courjon,et al.  Near field optics , 1993 .

[4]  G. H. Morrison,et al.  Parameter control, characterization, and optimization in the fabrication of optical fiber near-field probes. , 1995, Applied optics.

[5]  M. Ohtsu.  Progress of high-resolution photon scanning tunneling microscopy due to a nanometric fiber probe , 1995 .

[6]  Motoichi Ohtsu,et al.  HIGHLY EFFICIENT EXCITATION OF OPTICAL NEAR-FIELD ON AN APERTURED FIBER PROBE WITH AN ASYMMETRIC STRUCTURE , 1997 .

[7]  S. Kawata,et al.  Near-field scanning optical microscope with a metallic probe tip. , 1994, Optics letters.

[8]  Shudong Jiang,et al.  Reproducible Fabrication Technique of Nanometric Tip Diameter Fiber Probe for Photon Scanning Tunneling Microscope , 1992 .

[9]  M Ohtsu,et al.  Reproducible fabrication of a fiber probe with a nanometric protrusion for near-field optics. , 1997, Applied optics.

[10]  Motoichi Ohtsu,et al.  Low Temperature Near-Field Photoluminescence Spectroscopy of InGaAs Single Quantum Dots , 1998 .

[11]  Alfred J. Meixner,et al.  Temperature profile of fiber tips used in scanning near‐field optical microscopy , 1996 .

[12]  D. Pohl,et al.  Scanning near-field optical probe with ultrasmall spot size. , 1995, Optics letters.

[13]  U. Dürig,et al.  Near‐field optical‐scanning microscopy , 1986 .

[14]  D. Marcuse.  Light transmission optics , 1972 .