Realization of numerical aperture 2.0 using a gallium phosphide solid immersion lens

We report a study of a gallium phosphide, hemispherical, solid immersion lens through the imaging of 40-nm-diam fluorescent dye balls. A spatial resolution as small as 139 nm has been achieved at a wavelength of 560 nm, which is equivalent to a diffraction-limited system of numerical aperture 2.0. This resolution is a 33% improvement over conventional oil immersion objectives and previously reported solid immersion lenses, which typically have a numerical aperture around 1.5. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)02752-7].