Abstract

Recent development of the photon scanning tunneling microscope (PSTM), utilizing evanescent or tunneling photons, opened a novel area of diagnosing nanometerscale objects because the resolution, being far beyond the diffraction-limit,^[1,2,3] is limited only by the diameter of an aperture-probe or curvature radius of a sharpened fiber-probe (see Fig. 2(a)(b) for its detailed profile). Its principle of operation, employing a sharpened optical fiberprobe, is schematically explained by Fig. 1(a). Figure 1(b) shows the images of spherical head and cylindrical bodies of bacteriophages T4, which are the results of the first successful measurement in the world. This figure confirms that the resolution as high as several nanometer was achieved, which is, to the authors’ knowledges, one of the highest records documented so far.

© 1992 IQEC