Abstract

Near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) combines high-resolution force microscopy with nanometer-resolution optical imaging, NSOM, therefore, has the power not only to resolve optical features on the tens of nanometer distance scale, but it can also correlate those features to topography. The results of the NSOM studies of numerous aggregated systems is reported. These include the discovery of flexible molecular fibers via the solution-phase self-assembly of the pseudoisocyanine dye (PIC) 1,1′-diethyl- 2, 2′-cyanine and poly(vinyl sulfate) (PVS), spectral inhomogeneities in small PIC crystal resulting from polymorphism on the 100 nm scale, and the discovery of mesoscopic domains of aggregation in the conjugated polymer poly(pyridyl vi- nylene) (PPyV).

© 1996 Optical Society of America