DESIGN AND APPLICATION OF SCANNING NEAR-FIELD OPTICAL ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY/

This paper describes the design and application of a scanning near-fie ld optical/atomic force microscope (SNOAM). A sharpened and bent optic al fiber was used as a near-field optical probe as well as an atomic f orce microscope probe in a vertical vibrating mode. SNOAM provides sim ultaneous topographical and optical images with a resolution better th an 100 nm. The SNOAM observation modes such as transmission, reflectio n, fluorescence and in liquids were presented and demonstrated with hi gh resolution. As an example of application to optical processing, we produced pit pattern, down to similar to 200 nm in diameter exposed an d developed in commercial photoresist film.