Location: Lecture Theatre 1 (80.02.07)
Chair: Anton Tadich
Event Timeslots (1)
Friday 6th Dec
–
Optical Surface Profiling at Micro/Nanoscopic Scale
It is well known that standard compound microscopy has a fundamental lateral resolution limited by the wavelength of the light. Hence a lateral resolution of better than 200 nm cannot be achieved by a standard compound microscope. The innovations in techniques to overcome this limit has led to super-resolution microscopy which has enabled a burst of discovery, and has been recognized in the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry. What is less well known is that depth resolution at the nanometer scale is possible using interference microscopy – optical surface profiling. Two generations of Optical Surface Profiler have been established at Macquarie University through multi-institution ARC Linkage Infrastructure and Equipment funding. From the early plan to use this instrument to measure 3-dimensional data of microscopic single-laser-pulse/photonic materials interaction sites [1], we have gone on to research such things as ways to measure the diameter of semiconductor nanowires [2] and size nanoparticles [3]; explain unexpected spectral results in VUV spectroscopy [4]; study spider silks from several different species, with relevance to the likely visibility of the silks to insects; and uncovering unexpected systematics in laser processing of mineral muscovite [5]. Overall, this will be a tour of what we can learn and discover by embracing the third dimension in microscopy.
[1] D M Kane, A M Joyce, and R J Chater (2006), Optical surface profilometry of low reflectance materials – evaluation as a laser processing diagnostic, ch 15, pp271 – 289, Laser Cleaning II, Ed. D M Kane, World Scientific Publishers (Singapore, 2006) [2] D. J. Little and D. M. Kane, (2013), Measuring nanoparticle size using optical surface profilers, Optics Express 21(13), 15664, DOI:10.1364/OE.21.015664
[3] D J Little, R L Kuruwita, A. Joyce, Q. Gao, T. Burgess, C. Jagadish and D M Kane (2013), Phase stepping interferometry of GaAs nanowires: determining nanowire radius, Appl. Phys. Lett. 103(16), 161107, DOI: 10.1063/1.4825153. [4] R J Carman, D J Little and D M Kane (2015), Optical emission spectroscopy system operating in the VUV spectral range…, Meas. Science & Tech. 26 (8), Art. No. 085203. [5] Saurabh Awasthi, D J Little, A Fuerbach and D M Kane, (2019) Single femtosecond laser pulse interaction with mica, arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.02113