This paper focuses on finding optimal electrochemical conditions from linear sweep voltammetry analysis for preparing highly reproducible tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS) conical gold tips with dc-pulsed voltage etching. Special attention is given to the reproducibility of tip apex shapes with different etchant mixtures. We show that the fractional Brownian motion model enables a mathematic...

We present three-dimensional simulations of the image formation process in near-field optical microscopy. Our calculations take into account the different components of a realistic experiment: an extended metal coated tip, a subwavelength sample and its substrate. We investigate all possible detection (transmitted, reflected and collected field) and scanning (constant height, constant gap) mode...

Lanthanum-modified lead zirconate titanate ferroelectric ceramics (Pb0.96La0.04)(Zr0.40Ti0.60)0.99O3 were synthesized by the conventional powder processing technique. X-ray diffraction experiments revealed that the samples belong to the tetragonal phase with a 4 b 4 0.4055 nm, c 4 0.4109 nm, and c/a 4 1.013. After being poled, the samples were indented with a 5-kg Vickers indenter, and lateral ...

An ultrafast, nanoscale molecular switch is proposed, based on extension of the concept of nonadiabatic alignment to surface-adsorbed molecules. The switch consists of a conjugated organic molecule adsorbed onto a semiconducting surface and placed near a scanning tunneling microscope tip. A low-frequency, polarized laser field is used to switch the system by orienting the molecule with the fiel...

Near-field microscopy overcomes the diffraction limit through the partial conversion of the evanescent fields, formed around the subwavelength sources of light, into propagating waves by interactions between the probe and the sample. Contrast parameters in this imaging technique are quite different from those in conventional ~far-field! optics. We study the mechanisms of image formation in the ...

Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) is based on the optical excitation of localized surface plasmons in the tip-substrate cavity, which provides a large but local field enhancement near the tip apex. We report on TERS with smooth single crystalline surfaces as substrates. The adsorbates were CN- ions at Au(111) and malachite green isothiocyanate (MGITC) molecules at Au(111) and Pt(110) using...

We demonstrate a millimeter-wave surface imaging technique using a near-field scanning millimeter-wave microscope with a resonant standard waveguide probe. The metallic probe tip in the resonant waveguide was designed to couple energy into and out of the resonant waveguide. By measuring the shift of the resonant frequency and the change of the quality factor in the near-field zone, we obtained ...

We perform direct local-field imaging of a plasmon-resonant gold nanoparticle pair separated by a gap of several nanometers using a scattering-type near-field optical microscope with a sharp silicon tip of atomic force microscope. The sharp tip allows the access for the nanogap and the high spatial resolution. Our results provide experimental evidence that the nanogap structure produces an opti...

We studied the local optical response of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes to wrapping by DNA segments using high resolution tip-enhanced near-field microscopy. Photoluminescence (PL) near-field images of single nanotubes reveal large DNA-wrapping-induced red shifts of the exciton energy that are two times higher than indicated by spatially averaging confocal microscopy. Near-field ...

We present near-field Raman spectroscopy and imaging of single isolated single-walled carbon nanotubes with a spatial resolution of approximately 25 nm. The near-field origin of the image contrast is confirmed by the measured dependence of the Raman scattering signal on tip-sample distance and the unique polarization properties. The method is used to study local variations in the Raman spectrum...