Microsphere-assisted phase-shifting profilometry.

In the present work, we have investigated the combination of a superresolution microsphere-assisted 2D imaging technique with low-coherence phase-shifting interference microscopy. The imaging performance of this technique is studied by numerical simulation in terms of the magnification and the lateral resolution as a function of the geometrical and optical parameters. The results of simulations are compared with the experimental measurements of reference gratings using a Linnik interference configuration. Additional measurements are also shown on nanostructures. An improvement by a factor of 4.7 in the lateral resolution is demonstrated in air, thus giving a more isotropic nanometric resolution for full-field surface profilometry in the far field.

[1]  S. Hell,et al.  Fluorescence microscopy with diffraction resolution barrier broken by stimulated emission. , 2000, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[2]  William V. Houston,et al.  The Fine Structure and the Wave-Length of the Balmer Lines , 1926 .

[3]  J. Pendry,et al.  Negative refraction makes a perfect lens , 2000, Physical review letters.

[4]  Allen Taflove,et al.  Subdiffraction optical resolution of a gold nanosphere located within the nanojet of a Mie-resonant dielectric microsphere. , 2007, Optics express.

[5]  Yoshitate Takakura,et al.  Properties of a three-dimensional photonic jet. , 2005, Optics letters.

[6]  O. Haeberlé,et al.  Tomographic diffractive microscopy and multiview profilometry with flexible aberration correction. , 2014, Applied optics.

[7]  Tao Wang,et al.  Label-free super-resolution imaging of adenoviruses by submerged microsphere optical nanoscopy , 2013, Light: Science & Applications.

[8]  D. Montaner,et al.  Deep submicron 3D surface metrology for 300 mm wafer characterization using UV coherence microscopy , 1999 .

[9]  Chenglong Xia,et al.  Super-resolution fluorescence imaging of organelles in live cells with photoswitchable membrane probes , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[10]  S. Hell,et al.  Breaking the diffraction resolution limit by stimulated emission: stimulated-emission-depletion fluorescence microscopy. , 1994, Optics letters.

[11]  Bahram Javidi,et al.  Microsphere-assisted super-resolved Mirau digital holographic microscopy for cell identification. , 2017, Applied optics.

[12]  Michael Rubin,et al.  Optical Properties of Soda Lime Silica Glasses , 1985 .

[13]  Allen Taflove,et al.  Photonic nanojet enhancement of backscattering of light by nanoparticles: a potential novel visible-light ultramicroscopy technique. , 2004, Optics express.

[14]  P. Montgomery,et al.  Nanoscopy: nanometre defect analysis by computer aided 3D optical imaging , 1990 .

[15]  S W Hell,et al.  Confocal microscopy with an increased detection aperture: type-B 4Pi confocal microscopy. , 1994, Optics letters.

[16]  O. Haeberlé,et al.  High-resolution three-dimensional tomographic diffractive microscopy of transparent inorganic and biological samples. , 2009, Optics letters.

[17]  M. Gustafsson.  Nonlinear structured-illumination microscopy: wide-field fluorescence imaging with theoretically unlimited resolution. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[18]  J. Lippincott-Schwartz,et al.  Imaging Intracellular Fluorescent Proteins at Nanometer Resolution , 2006, Science.

[19]  Edward Hæggström,et al.  3D Super-Resolution Optical Profiling Using Microsphere Enhanced Mirau Interferometry , 2017, Scientific Reports.

[20]  Zengbo Wang,et al.  Optical virtual imaging at 50 nm lateral resolution with a white-light nanoscope. , 2011, Nature communications.

[21]  Pierre Chavel.  Optical noise and temporal coherence , 1980 .

[22]  Yuechao Wang,et al.  Three-Dimensional Super-Resolution Morphology by Near-Field Assisted White-Light Interferometry , 2016, Scientific Reports.

[23]  Peter J. de Groot,et al.  Principles of interference microscopy for the measurement of surface topography , 2015 .

[24]  Lianqing Liu,et al.  Scanning superlens microscopy for non-invasive large field-of-view visible light nanoscale imaging , 2016, Nature Communications.

[25]  Hiroaki Takajo,et al.  Noniterative method for obtaining the exact solution for the normal equation in least-squares phase estimation from the phase difference , 1988 .

[26]  E. G. van Putten,et al.  Scattering lens resolves sub-100 nm structures with visible light. , 2011, Physical review letters.

[27]  Yang Wang,et al.  Near-field focusing of the dielectric microsphere with wavelength scale radius. , 2013, Optics express.

[28]  Sylvain Lecler,et al.  Role of coherence in microsphere-assisted nanoscopy , 2017, Optical Metrology.