From superresolution to nanodetection: overview of far field optical nanoscopy techniques for nanostructures

Abstract

Far field optical nanoscopy has been brought to the forefront with the 2014 Nobel Prize for chemistry in fluorescent nanoscopy for revealing intra-cellular details of tens of nm. In this review, we present an improved classification scheme that summarizes the many optical nanoscopy techniques that exist. We place particular emphasis on unlabelledsuperresolution techniques that provide real improved resolving power and unlabellednanodetection techniques for characterizing unresolved nanostructures. Superresolution is illustrated with sub-100 nm imaging of diatoms with tomographic diffractive microscopyand adenoviruseswith submerged microsphere optical nanoscopy. Three sub-categories of nanodetectionare then presented. Contrast enhancement is illustrated with surface enhanced ellipsometric contrast microscopy for the study of bacterial motility and strobed phase contrast microscopy for measuring the mechanical properties of vesicle membranes. High sensitivity phase measurement using interference microscopy demonstrates how nanostructured surfaces and structures can be characterized in biomaterials, laser textured stainless steel and defects within thin polymer films. Finally, deconvolution is illustrated with the use of through-focus scanning optical microscopy in critical dimension measurement and characterization of 40 nm linewidths in microelectronic devices. In this way we show how new far field optical nanoscopy techniques are being developed for unlabelled characterization of nano and biomaterials.