Imaging dynamical processes at interfaces and on the nanoscale is of great importance throughout science technology. While light-optical imaging techniques often cannot provide necessary spatial resolution, electron-optical damage specimen cause dose-induced artefacts. Here, Optical Near-field Electron Microscopy (ONEM) proposed, an technique that combines non-invasive probing with light, a hig...

The ability of using scattering-type near-field scanning optical microscopy (s-NSOM) to characterize amplitude and phase of optical near fields was investigated. We employ numerical simulations to compute signals scattered by the tip, using a bowtie nano-aperture as the example, and compare with the data obtained from s-NSOM measurements. Through demodulation of higher order harmonic signals, w...

Scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) is a popular tool to overcome the diffraction limit for the investigation of subwavelength-scale optical structures. For nearly 30 years, various configurations have been implemented to characterize the interactions of the electromagnetic field with nanostructures in the near field. An accurate understanding of these interactions requires a detailed...

A scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM) is a powerful tool to investigate optical effects that are smaller than Abbe’s limit. Its greatest strength is the simultaneous measurement of high-resolution topography and optical near-field data that can be correlated to each other. However, the resolution of an aperture SNOM is always limited by the probe. It is a technical challenge to fabric...

This work is a text-book for senior and magistracy students, dedicated to one of the most modern solid-state body surface research techniques – Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM). The book considers the basic SPM types: Scanning Tunnel Microscopy (STM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Electric Force Microscopy (EFM), Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM), Near-field Optical Microscopy (NOM), which have f...

Constant-height scanning is demonstrated to improve near-field microscopy by eliminating artifacts connected with topography scanning, hence, to image the inherent electromagnetic contrast. Microwaves are chosen for this study because the long wavelength eliminates coherence artifacts, owing to a scale separation of wave and image frequencies. Measured amplitude and phase images of conductive f...

Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy (SNOM) is the leading instrument used to image optical fields on the nanometer scale. A metal-coating is typically applied to SNOM probes to define a subwavelength aperture and minimize optical leakage, but the presence of such coatings in the near field of the sample can often cause a substantial change in the sample emission properties. For the first tim...

The free boundary of smectic A (SmA), nematic and isotropic liquid phases were studied using a polarized optical microscope, an interferometric surface structure analyzer (ISSA), an atomic force microscope (AFM) and a scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM). Images of the SmA phase free surface obtained by the polarized microscope and ISSA are in good correlation and show a well-known foc...