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  4. Ultrasharp carbon whisker optical fiber probes for scanning near-field optical microscopy
 
conference paper

Ultrasharp carbon whisker optical fiber probes for scanning near-field optical microscopy

Mensi, Mounir  
•
Mikhailov, Gennadii  
•
Pyatkin, Sergey
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Andrews, DL
•
Nunzi, JM
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2010
Proceedings of SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering
Conference On Nanophotonics III

We report the growth of ultrasharp carbon whiskers onto apertured near-field optical glass fiber probes. The ultrasharp carbon whiskers are produced by the electron-assisted dissociation of residual oil vapors present in the vacuum chamber during the electron beam exposition of the tip. This cost effective manufacturing procedure is reproducible, fast and allows controlling the shape of the carbon whisker. The radius of curvature of the whisker apex is approximately 10 nm while its small total length is around 100 nm thus fulfilling the requirements of aperture Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscope (SNOM) probes, i.e. to keep the distance between the sample and the optical aperture during the scanning at subwavelength scale. Furthermore, due to the intrinsic properties of the amorphous carbon whisker, the probes are durable. The carbon whisker optical fiber probes are mounted on tuning-forks using the earlier discussed double-resonant principle. This process ensures a high quality factor of the sensor in the range 2000-5500, which enables to cope with the large stiffness of the tuning-fork actuator and obtain a characteristic noise-limited sensitivity smaller than 10pN necessary to image soft biological samples without destroying them. To illustrate the sensor's performances, transmission near-field optical images of SNOM calibration grating as well as high-resolution state-of-the-art topographic images of single DNA molecules are presented. Prospects of further improvements of the fabrication method enabling to achieve the lighting rod enhancement of the optical near-field (nano-antenna effect) are briefly discussed.

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Type
conference paper
DOI
10.1117/12.853697
Web of Science ID

WOS:000285085000029

Author(s)
Mensi, Mounir  
Mikhailov, Gennadii  
Pyatkin, Sergey
Adamcik, Jozef  
Sekatskii, Sergey  
Dietler, Giovanni  
Editors
Andrews, DL
•
Nunzi, JM
•
Ostendorf, A.
Date Issued

2010

Publisher

SPIE-INT SOC OPTICAL ENGINEERING, 1000 20TH ST, PO BOX 10, BELLINGHAM, WA 98227-0010 USA

Publisher place

Bellingham

Published in
Proceedings of SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering
ISBN of the book

978-0-8194-8185-6

Series title/Series vol.

Proceedings of SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering

Volume

7712

Subjects

Scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM)

•

carbon whisker

•

nano-probe

•

single molecule

•

DNA

•

sub-diffraction limit

•

nano-antenna

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LPMV  
Event nameEvent placeEvent date
Conference On Nanophotonics III

Brussels, BELGIUM

APR 12-16, 2010

Available on Infoscience
June 24, 2011
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/68972
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