A Light Source Smaller Than the Optical Wavelength

Abstract

A method has been developed for the efficient emission of light from subwavelength dimensions. It is based on packaging photons as molecular excitons, effectively reducing the volume of the light beam by 10(9) and making possible propagation through dimensions of 1 nanometer. Molecular microcrystals are grown in the tips of micropipettes that have inner diameters of 100 nanometers or less. Measurements are presented that demonstrate this improvement in transmission for pipettes of various diameters. The ultrasmall dimensions of these light sources, the wavelength range (ultraviolet to red) of their emission, their ease of production, and their expected unique abilities for high efficiency excitation-imaging of surfaces portend significant applications for this methodology.

Generalized bloch equations for optical interactions in confined geometries

“…Over the last decade, numerous experimental configurations have been proposed for studying single molecule photophysical phenomena triggered by nanometer size light fields [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. These configurations involve the interaction of microscopic entities with their macroscopic environment.…”

Time-Resolved and Near-Field Scanning Optical Microscopy Study on Porphyrin J-Aggregate

“…One of the most fruitful optical spectroscopic technique in small domains is scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM), which provides a spatial resolution better than the diffraction limit (λ/2) for imaging and spectroscopy applications [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Molecular aggregates and microcrystals have been *The results of this paper were initially presented at The Jabłoński Centennial Conference on Luminescence and Photοphysics, July 23-27, 1998, Toruń, Poland. (835) the subject of SNOM study because of their heterogeneous properties on the solid surfaces.…”

Highly controllable fabrication of fiber probe for photon scanning tunneling microscope

“…A reproducible and efficient fabrication of the probe, therefore, becomes very important for PSTM. Some fabrication methods (Lieberman et al 1990, Pagnia et al 1990, Pohl et al 1984 have been reported, but sufficiently high reproducibility and detection efficiency have not yet been achieved and the tip diameter of the fabricated probe has not been small enough for resolving the nanometric scale structure of the sample. To solve these problems, a selective etching method using a buffered hydrofluoric (HF) acid as an etching solution has been applied to a single-mode fiber, fabricated by the vapor-phase axial deposition (VAD) method for fabricating the fiber probes (Jiang et al 1991;Pangaribuan et al 1992Pangaribuan et al , 1993.…”