Far-field optical superlenses without metal

Abstract

The spatial resolution in traditional optical microscopy is limited by diffraction. This prevents imaging of features with dimensions smaller than half of the wavelength (λ) of the illumination source. Superlenses have been recently proposed and demonstrated to overcome this issue. However, its implementation often involves complex sample fabrication and lossy metal layers. Alternatively, a superlens without metals can be realized using surface waves as the illumination source at the interface between two dielectrics, at the total internal reflection condition, where one of the dielectrics is doped with a fluorescent material. Non-scanning far-field images with resolution of ∼λ/5 and without the need of any post-processing or image reconstruction can be achieved with this approach.