near-field scanning optical microscopy Near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) or scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) is a microscopy technique for nanostructure investigation that breaks the far field resolution limit by exploiting the properties of evanescent waves ...

the campanile probe is a tapered optical probe with a shape of a

campanile A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...

square pyramid In geometry, a square pyramid is a pyramid having a square base. If the apex is perpendicularly above the center of the square, it is a right square pyramid, and has symmetry. If all edge lengths are equal, it is an equilateral square pyramid, ...

). It is made of an optically transparent

dielectric In electromagnetism, a dielectric (or dielectric medium) is an electrical insulator that can be polarised by an applied electric field. When a dielectric material is placed in an electric field, electric charges do not flow through the mate ...

, typically

silica Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is one ...

, and its two facets are coated with a metal, typically

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

. At the probe tip, the metal-coated facets are separated by a gap of a few tens of nanometers, which determines the spatial resolution of the probe. Such a probe design allows collecting optical signals, usually

photoluminescence Photoluminescence (abbreviated as PL) is light emission from any form of matter after the absorption of photons (electromagnetic radiation). It is one of many forms of luminescence (light emission) and is initiated by photoexcitation (i.e. photon ...

(PL) or

Raman scattering Raman scattering or the Raman effect () is the inelastic scattering of photons by matter, meaning that there is both an exchange of energy and a change in the light's direction. Typically this effect involves vibrational energy being gained by a ...

, with a subwavelength resolution, breaking the

diffraction limit The resolution of an optical imaging system a microscope, telescope, or camera can be limited by factors such as imperfections in the lenses or misalignment. However, there is a principal limit to the resolution of any optical system, due to th ...

. The campanile probe is attached to an optical fiber, which both provides a laser excitation of the studied sample and collects the measured signal. The probe is rastered over the sample with a standard

scanning probe microscopy Scan may refer to: Acronyms * Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN), a psychiatric diagnostic tool developed by WHO * Shared Check Authorization Network (SCAN), a database of bad check writers and collection agency for bad ...

scanner, keeping the distance to the sample surface at a few nanometers. Contrary to the traditional (circular) near-field probes, the campanile probe has no cut-off frequency and is insensitive to the spatial mode of the optical near field. Hence its application is not limited to thin-film samples. Another advantage of the campanile probe is a high signal collection efficiency, which exceeds 90%. Campanile probes are typically fabricated as follows: a standard cylindrical single-mode optical fiber is etched with

hydrofluoric acid Hydrofluoric acid is a Solution (chemistry), solution of hydrogen fluoride (HF) in water. Solutions of HF are colourless, acidic and highly Corrosive substance, corrosive. It is used to make most fluorine-containing compounds; examples include th ...

to create a conical tip with a radius of ca. 100 nm. Then a square pyramid is carved on the tip using

focused ion beam Focused ion beam, also known as FIB, is a technique used particularly in the semiconductor industry, materials science and increasingly in the biological field for site-specific analysis, deposition, and ablation of materials. A FIB setup is a s ...

(FIB) milling, and its two facets are coated with a metal by shadow evaporation. A nanometer gap is the opened on the tip by FIB. Alternative fabrication method uses

nanoimprint lithography Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a method of fabricating nanometer scale patterns. It is a simple nanolithography process with low cost, high throughput and high resolution. It creates patterns by mechanical deformation of imprint resist and subse ...

to replicate campanile pyramid from a mold. This approach significantly increases fabrication speed.

References

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