Unibody microscope objective tipped with a microsphere: design, fabrication and application in subwavelength imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel unibody microscope objective lens, the PCM-objective, combining a high-index microsphere with a conventional lens to achieve super-resolution imaging of nanoscale features.

Contribution

The work presents a new, robust, low-cost unibody objective lens integrating a microsphere, enabling super-resolution imaging compatible with existing microscopes.

Findings

Achieves subwavelength resolution in air conditions.

Systematic analysis of imaging performance and working distance.

Facilitates larger area imaging with scanning process.

Abstract

Microsphere-based subwavelength imaging technique was first demonstrated in 2011. After nearly a decade of efforts, such technique has spawned numerous interests in fields such as laser nano-machining, imaging, sensing and biological detection. For wider industrial scale application of the technique, a robust, low-cost objective lens incorporating microsphere lens is highly desired and sought by many researchers. In this work, we demonstrate a unibody microscope objective lens formed by tipping a high-index microsphere onto a Plano-Convex lens and subsequently fitting them into a conventional objective lens. We call such new objective the Plano-Convex-Microsphere (PCM) objective, which resembles the appearance and operation of an ordinary microscope objective, while providing super-resolving power in discerning subwavelength nanoscale features in air condition. The imaging performance of PCM-objective along with the working distance has been systematically investigated. With the assistance of scanning process, larger area imaging is realized. The PCM-objective can be easily adaptive to many existing microscope systems and appealing for commercialization.