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Updated: Aug 21, 2026

Assembly, Tuning and Use of an Apertureless Near Field Infrared Microscope for Protein Imaging
Published on: November 25, 2009
Apertureless scanning near-field fluorescence microscopy in liquids
A Fragola1, L Aigouy, P Y Mignotte
1Laboratoire Spectroscopie en Lumière Polarisée, UPR A0005 du CNRS, ESPCI, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75231 Paris Cedex 5, France.
Abstract:
We show that apertureless scanning near-field optical microscopes that use sharp vibrating conical tips can be operated in liquid environments. We have investigated the damping of the tip oscillation as a function of its shape and as a function of its depth under the liquid surface. The degradation of the quality factor from 150 in air down to 15 in liquid does not impede to perform topographic and optical measurements with a very good sensitivity. As an example of application, we present near-field fluorescence images of dye-doped polystyrene spheres immersed in a liquid.
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