title: Subnanometric stabilization of plasmon-enhanced optical microscopy.
abstract: We have demonstrated subnanometric stabilization of tip-enhanced optical microscopy under ambient condition. Time-dependent thermal drift of a plasmonic metallic tip was optically sensed at subnanometer scale, and was compensated in real-time. In addition, mechanically induced displacement of the tip, which usually occurs when the amount of tip-applied force varies, was also compensated in situ. The stabilization of tip-enhanced optical microscopy enables us to perform long-time and robust measurement without any degradation of optical signal, resulting in true nanometric optical imaging with high reproducibility and high precision. The technique presented is applicable for AFM-based nanoindentation with subnanometric precision.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan. yano@ap.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Taka-aki
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Yano
authors.forename: Taro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ichimura
authors.forename: Shota
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuwahara
authors.forename: Prabhat
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Verma
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kawata
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D020527:Microscopy, Scanning Probe / Q000295:instrumentation*; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000295:instrumentation*