Demonstration of atomic force microscopy imaging using an integrated opto-electro-mechanical transducer.

The low throughput of atomic force microscopy (AFM) is the main drawback in its large-scale deployment in industrial metrology. A promising solution would be based on the parallelization of the scanning probe system, allowing acquisition of the image by an array of probes operating simultaneously. A key step for reaching this goal relies on the miniaturization and integration of the sensing mechanism.

Mapping buried nanostructures using subsurface ultrasonic resonance force microscopy.

Nondestructive subsurface nanoimaging of buried nanostructures is considered to be extremely challenging and is essential for the reliable manufacturing of nanotechnology products such as three-dimensional (3D) transistors, 3D NAND memory, and future quantum electronics. In scanning probe microscopy (SPM), a microcantilever with a sharp tip can measure the properties of a surface with nanometer resolution. SPM combined with ultrasound excitation, known as ultrasound SPM, has shown the capability to image buried nanoscale features.

K-space polarimetry of bullseye plasmon antennas.

Surface plasmon resonators can drastically redistribute incident light over different output wave vectors and polarizations. This can lead for instance to sub-diffraction sized nanoapertures in metal films that beam and to nanoparticle antennas that enable efficient conversion of photons between spatial modes, or helicity channels. We present a polarimetric Fourier microscope as a new experimental tool to completely characterize the angle-dependent polarization-resolved scattering of single nanostructures.

Method of calculating local dispersion in arbitrary photonic crystal waveguides.

We introduce a novel method to calculate the local dispersion relation in photonic crystal waveguides, based on the finite-difference time-domain simulation and filter diagonalization method (FDM). In comparison with the spatial Fourier transform method (SFT), the highly local dispersion calculations based on FDM are considerably superior and pronounced. For the first time to our knowledge, the presented numerical technique allows comparing the dispersion in straight and bent waveguides.