Near-field solid immersion lens microscope with advanced compact mechanical design

A compact mechanical package is developed for a standard microscope that implements a solid immersion lens (SIL) on a retractable bimorph swing arm. With the compact package mounted on an inverted microscope, far-field and near-field images are obtained at the same location by moving the SIL with the swing arm. With white-light incoherent illumination, the resolution of this system for observing digital versatile discs is around 200 nm with an effective numerical aperture of 1.5. Imaging with the SIL is compared with an atomic force microscopy scan. (c) 2006 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.