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arXiv · 1912.09550

Unibody microscope objective tipped with a microsphere: design, fabrication and application in subwavelength imaging

Bing Yan·Yang Song·Xibin Yang·Daxi Xiong·Zengbo Wang
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Abstract

Microsphere-based subwavelength imaging technique was first demonstrated in 2011. After nearly a decade of efforts, such technique has spawned numerous interests in fields such as laser nano-machining, imaging, sensing and biological detection. For wider industrial scale application of the technique, a robust, low-cost objective lens incorporating microsphere lens is highly desired and sought by many researchers. In this work, we demonstrate a unibody microscope objective lens formed by tipping a high-index microsphere onto a Plano-Convex lens and subsequently fitting them into a conventional objective lens. We call such new objective the Plano-Convex-Microsphere (PCM) objective, which resembles the appearance and operation of an ordinary microscope objective, while providing super-resolving power in discerning subwavelength nanoscale features in air condition. The imaging performance of PCM-objective along with the working distance has been systematically investigated. With the assistance of scanning process, larger area imaging is realized. The PCM-objective can be easily adaptive to many existing microscope systems and appealing for commercialization.

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Bing Yan, Yang Song, Xibin Yang, Daxi Xiong, Zengbo Wang. 2019-12-19. Unibody microscope objective tipped with a microsphere: design, fabrication and application in subwavelength imaging. https://doi.org/10.1364/ao.386504

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