Study of the mechanism of the single atom observation with near-field optical microscopy using the force detection

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K13382
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Optical engineering, Photon science
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: Li Yanjun 大阪大学, 工学研究科, 准教授 (50379137)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: near-field / optical microscopy / imaging / AFM

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, our purpose is to realize the high sensitive and high resolution optical imaging with near-field scanning optical microscopy using photon-induced force detection, and to elucidate mechanism of the imaging with atomic resolution. As a result, we demonstrated atomic resolution imaging of the near-field on the α-Al2O3 (0001) surface of a prism. The surface aluminum atoms were imaged as bright spots. We investigated the spatial distribution of the near-field by scanning at different tip-sample distances and found that the atomic corrugation of the near-field signal was observed at greater distances than that of the atomic force microscopy signal. This result suggests that the optical image is imaged by a change of the polarizability for the electric field of the surface atom.

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