CC BY
5ALT'22
BIOMEDICAL PHOTONICS
B-I-2
THz solid immersion microscopy: Review and perspectives
N.V. Chernomyrdin1'2. V.A. Zhelnov1, M. Skorobogatiy3, K.I. Zaytsev1'2
1- Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia 2- Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Moscow, Russia 3- Department of Engineering Physics, Polytechnique Montreal, Montreal, Canada Main author email address: chernik-a@yandex.ru
Unique effects of terahertz (THz)-wave-matter interaction push rapid progress in THz optoelectronics aimed at bridging the problematic THz gap [1]. However, majority of modern methods of THz spectroscopy and imaging are still hampered by low spatial resolution. Common lens/mirror-based THz optics fails to overcome the Abbe barrier and usually provides resolution larger than a free-space wavelength X (i.e., hundreds of micrometers or even few millimeters) [2,3]. To mitigate this difficulty, supperresolution THz imaging modalities were introduced recently, among which we particularly underline different methods of THz scanning-probe near-field microscopy. They not only rely on strong light confinement on sub-wavelength probes and provide resolution down to 10-1-10-3X but also suffer from small energy efficiency or presume an interplay among imaging resolution, signal-to-noise ratio, and performance [4]many research teams working at Terahertz frequencies focused their efforts on surpassing the diffraction limit. Numerous techniques have been investigated, combining methods existing at optic wavelength with THz system such as Time Domain Spectroscopy. The actual development led on one side to a resolution as high as X/3000 and one the other side to a video-rate recording. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the history of the field, to describe the different approaches, to give examples of existing applications and to draw the perspective for this research area. © 2011 The Author(s. In our work, we consider reflection-mode THz solid immersion (SI) microscopy that offers some compromise between the high imaging resolution of 0,15X and high energy efficiency, which is due to the absence of any subwavelength probe in an optical scheme [2,3]. Recent achievements, challenging problems, and prospects of SI microscopy are overviewed [5-8] with an emphasis on resolving the inverse problem and applications in THz biophotonics [9,10].
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