APERTURELESS NEAR-FIELD OPTICAL MICROSCOPE IN REFLECTION AND TRANSMISSION MODES

Apertureless Scanning Near-field Optical Microscope (SNOM) receives an increasing interest in local imaging and analysis. We report a hybrid microscope composed of a commercial Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and an apertureless SNOM, which operates both in reflection and transmiss ion modes with several illumination and collection systems. The optica l probe is a commercial AFM tip integrated on a silicon cantilever. Th e AFM is operated in the intermittent contact mode at the resonance fr equency of the cantilever. We present the images obtained on a grating of cylindrical dots of aluminum (diameter is 200 nm, height is 20 nm) and we show the effects of some optical parameters (polarization, dir ection of illumination and collection) on the SNOM images. (C) 1998 So ciety of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.