The study of nanostructures is creating a need for microscopes that can see beyond the limits of conventional visible light and ultraviolet microscopes. X-ray imaging is a promising option. A new microscope described this week achieves unprecedented resolution, and has the ability to see through containing material. It features a specially made two-component zone plate — a lens with concentric zones rather like the rings in the Fresnel lenses familiar in overhead projectors and elsewhere — that makes use of diffraction to project an image into a CCD camera sensitive to soft X-rays. Spatial resolution of better than 15 nm is possible. Analytical tools that have spatial resolution at the nanometre scale are indispensable for the life and physical sciences. It is desirable that these tools also permit elemental and chemical identification on a scale of 10 nm or less, with large penetration depths. A variety of techniques1,2,3,4,5,6,7 in X-ray imaging are currently being developed that may provide these combined capabilities. Here we report the achievement of sub-15-nm spatial resolution with a soft X-ray microscope—and a clear path to below 10 nm—using an overlay technique for zone plate fabrication. The microscope covers a spectral range from a photon energy of 250 eV (∼5 nm wavelength) to 1.8 keV (∼0.7 nm), so that primary K and L atomic resonances of elements such as C, N, O, Al, Ti, Fe, Co and Ni can be probed. This X-ray microscopy technique is therefore suitable for a wide range of studies: biological imaging in the water window8,9; studies of wet environmental samples10,11; studies of magnetic nanostructures with both elemental and spin-orbit sensitivity12,13,14; studies that require viewing through thin windows, coatings or substrates (such as buried electronic devices in a silicon chip15); and three-dimensional imaging of cryogenically fixed biological cells9,16.

Soft X-ray microscopy at a spatial resolution better than 15 nm

A photon sieve with 10(7) holes has been constructed for operation at optical wavelengths. Details of the design, fabrication, and performance of this device are presented. The 1 m focal-length, 0.1 m diameter element is diffraction limited over a significant bandwidth and has a moderate field of view.

Large optical photon sieve

Subwavelength Optical Engineering with Metasurface Waves

As a revolutionary three-dimensional (3D) optical imaging technique, optical holography has attracted wide attention for its capability of recording both the amplitude and phase information of light scattered from objects Holograms are designed to transform an incident wave into a desired arbitrary wavefront in the far field, which requires ultimate complex phase control in each hologram pixel Conventional holograms shape the wavefront via the phase accumulation effect during the wave propagation through bulky optical elements, suffering issues of low-resolution imaging and high-order diffraction Recently, metasurfaces, 2D metamaterials with ultrathin thickness, have emerged as an important platform to reproduce computer-generated holograms due to their advantages in manipulating light with well-controlled amplitude, phase, and polarization In this article, the latest research progress in various types of metasurface holograms is reviewed from their design principles to versatile functional applications At the end, more potential applications of metasurface holograms are discussed and some future research directions are also provided

Metasurface Holograms for Holographic Imaging

We demonstrate the ability of stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, a far-field fluorescence imaging technique with diffraction-unlimited resolution, to reveal the spatial order of fluorescent nanoparticles. Unlike its confocal counterpart, here STED microscopy resolves the arrangements of densely packed 40 nm beads, supramolecular aggregates in a cell membrane, and colloidal nanoparticles. Both raw and linearly deconvolved data disclose unprecedented details of both biological and non-biological nanopatterns.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/8/6/106/pdf

STED microscopy resolves nanoparticle assemblies

Fresnel zone plates consisting of alternating transmissive and opaque circular rings can be used to focus X-rays1. The spatial resolution that can be achieved with these devices is of the order of the width of the outermost zone and is therefore limited by the smallest structure (20–40 nm) that can be fabricated by lithography today2. Here we show that a large number of pinholes distributed appropriately over the Fresnel zones make it possible to focus soft X-rays to spot sizes smaller than the diameter of the smallest pinhole. In addition, higher orders of diffraction and secondary maxima can be suppressed by several orders of magnitude. In combination with the next generation of synchrotron light sources (free-electron lasers) these ‘photon sieves’ offer new opportunities for high-resolution X-ray microscopy and spectroscopy in physical and life sciences.

R. Seemann

Papers

Sharper images by focusing soft X-rays with photon sieves