Abstract
Our research centres on the development of dielectric superlenses and their super-resolution imaging applications. In recent years, we pioneered ‘microsphere superlens (2011)’[1], ‘spider silk superlens (2016)’[2] and ‘TiO2 nanoparticle-made metamaterial superlens (2016)’[3]. These techniques were widely publicized and able to deliver resolution between 45 and 100 nm under white light, well surpassing the classical half wavelength diffraction limit which is about 200-300 nm for white light. Of these developments we envisage the last one, the metamaterial superlens made from high-index TiO2 nanoparticles (n=2.55) has the great potential to be further developed to realize a near-perfect optical superlens in visible band. This is because of its unique working principles. Based on full-wave EM simulation, we discovered that such high-index nanoparticle assembled metamaterial superlens can effectively convert evanescent waves into propagating waves travelling into the far-field (Fig. 1a). Using 15 nm TiO2 as building block, hotspots are formed at gaps of nanoparticles, the field spot on substrate surface can realize a FWHM of about 8 nm (a near-perfect resolution), half the nanoparticle size. In such situation, the resolution is determined by particle size instead of wavelength, a case similar to the NSOM[4,5].
© 2017 IEEE
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