Image of the Month

December 2008

Near-Field and Confocal Raman Microscopy

institution

Microscope:
Homebuilt

Controls:
RHK Technology SPM 1000 Control System

Description:
The topography and near-field images were obtained with shear-force microscopy using a chemically etched gold tip attached to a quartz tuning fork. The confocal Raman instrument used in this experiment is based on an inverted optical microscope equipped with an x,y-scan stage. A high numerical aperture objective (1.4 NA) is used to focus a radially polarized laser beam with wavelength 785nm on the sample surface. The scattered light is collected using the same objective and then detected with a single-photon counting avalanche photodiode (APD). The images lateral sizes are 5 micra.

The sample is a self-organized carbon nanotube serpentine on a quartz substrate produced by Prof. Ernesto Joselevich’s group, at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Gustavo Cancado and Lukas Novotny
Institute of Optics, University of Rochester