Abstract

The necessity of optical technology has increased by these two decades in the fields of biological and material sciences and in the high-tech industries of data-storage and microfabrication. However, the optical technology has a limitation in spatial resolution due to the diffraction of light. Near field optics solves such a limitation, by using a nanometricscale probe to generate or to pick up the evanescent photons of short wavelength, interacted with nano-structures. After the first proposal of near field optical microscope in 1928, we had to wait the progress of technologies of both nanometric-scale fabrication and nanometricscale control of probes for several decades. The experimental research of near field optics has started with topographic imaging in 1970’s with microwave and in 1980’s with visible light. Then, the trend has moved towards fluorescence imaging in 1990’s. Images of single molecules were obtained with near field fluorescence microscopes. In 2000’s, the development of the method to observe molecules without staining with dyes became the main issue in near field optics studies. In this presentation I will describe about this new optical science in terms of instrumentations (probes), theories, and its applications to related scientific fields.

© 2001 IEEE