Micromachined silicon nitride solid immersion lens

We present a fabrication method for silicon nitride solid immersion lenses (SILs) integrated with atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilevers. We demonstrate a scanning optical microscope based on the microfabricated SIL that operates in reflection and transmission modes at a wavelength of /spl lambda/ = 400 nm. In this microscope, light is focused to a spot in a high refractive index SIL held close to the sample. The minimum spot size of a SIL-based microscope, which determines the transverse optical resolution, is /spl lambda//(2n) where n is the refractive index of the SIL. This is smaller than the minimum spot size of /spl lambda//2 in air. The SIL, therefore, makes possible optical resolution better than the diffraction limit in air. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) spot size of the SIL-based microscope is measured to be /spl sim/133 nm in transmission mode, which is /spl sim/1.98 times better than the spot size measured without the SIL (264 nm). This improvement factor is close to the refractive index of the silicon nitride SIL (n = 1.96).     

Thickness tolerance compensation of SIL first surface near-field recording with replicated lens on SIL

In this paper, we propose a novel optics design for improving the thickness tolerance of a super-hemispherical solid immersion lens (SIL) that is usually used in near-field recording for high data density. To obtain the improved thickness tolerance of a SIL and a high numerical aperture simultaneously, an aspheric replicated lens is added on the SIL. Using an additional aspheric replicated lens, spherical aberration which induces the tight thickness tolerance of the SIL is effectively reduced, therefore it was able to improve the thickness tolerance of the SIL, maintaining high NA equal to that of super-hemispherical SIL. In addition, in this paper, other various tolerances such as decenter and tilt are considered to make sure of the possibility of fabrication.     

Assembly and evaluation of a SIL optical head for cover-layered incident NFR without disk contact with the bottom surface of a SIL

In the assembly of the solid immersion lens (SIL) optical head for cover-layered incident near-field recordings (NFRs), disk contact with the bottom surface of the SIL has previously been regarded as essential. This is because SIL optical heads are designed to interface with a cover layer. However, SILs can be contaminated and damaged by this contact. We present a new SIL optical head assembly method for cover-layered incident NFRs without disk contact with the bottom surface of the SIL. To achieve this, we added zoom optics to a Twyman–Green interferometer in the measurement beam optical path. Our assembly method eliminates SIL contamination problems and the assembly procedure becomes simple because of removing the disk contact process. In addition, it is not necessary to consider the aberrations induced by disk tilt and cover-layer thickness variation. The SIL optical head assembled by the proposed method has good optical performance satisfying the optical tolerances and the measured wavefront aberration is good agreement with simulations.     

Optical Near-Field Probe Integrated With Self-Aligned Bow-Tie Antenna and Electrostatic Actuator for Local Field Enhancement

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) probes with a bow-tie antenna structure consisting of two metal triangular electrodes separated by a narrow gap have been designed and fabricated. An electrostatic actuator is integrated on this bow-tie probe to decrease the gap width for enhancing the optical near-field intensity. A self-alignment process based on deep reactive ion etching and wet anisotropic etching is established to fabricate the symmetric bow-tie structure. The static and dynamic actuations of electrostatic actuators are examined. With the mechanical resonance of the antenna structure to lateral direction, NSOM imaging is performed in the visible range, and the subwavelength resolution beyond the diffraction limit of light is demonstrated.1655     

Optical recording system using an integrated solid immersion lens

 Nobody doubts that the high area density recording and miniaturization of the devices in the data storage are in the general trend. What matters now is how to compact the data in a small area and how to decrease the device size. For the last decade, a lot of researchers engaged in the optical memory have expected the near-field recording (NFR) technology to be able to bring the remarkable results. However, they have been confronted with many obstacles including heat, contamination, dynamics of optical head in the unsealed environment, etc. In this paper, we propose the new concept of a solid immersion lens (SIL) with a potential to be able to resolve the critical issues on the way to the commercialization of the high areal density optical recording using the near-field recording technology. Received: 5 July 2001/Accepted: 17 October 2001     

Surface nanostructuring by femtosecond laser irradiation through near-field scanning optical microscopy

A near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) and a double-frequency femtosecond laser (400 nm, 100 fs) were applied to push the optical resolution further down to sub-50 nm on thin UV photoresist. A 20-nm feature size can be obtained. It is at a resolution of λ/20 (λ: laser wavelength) and a/2 (a: NSOM probe aperture diameter), respectively. It is proved that laser power and exposure time can affect feature size of lithography patterns. In this paper, the effect of probe-to-sample distance on dot-pattern features is studied, and different dot-pattern shapes are generated: dumbbell-dot, ellipsoid-dot and circle-dot. The simulated light field spatial distributions across the nano-aperture based on Bethe–Bouwkamp model is found to agree with experimental results very well.     

Readout characteristics of a non-circular aperture mounted on an optical head slider flying above a medium having sub-100-nm-long patterns

The near-field principle combined with thin-film gas-lubricated slider bearing technology is thought to be one of the most promising breakthroughs to overcome the difficult optical diffraction limit (or wavelength shortening limit), which governs traditional optical recording performance. In light of this, we have demonstrated high linear density (150 nm pattern length) and high speed 10 MHz readout signals using the combination of a tapered circular aperture and a planar lens mounted on a quartz slider, flying above a metal patterned medium. In order to further improve both the spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio of this device, it is essential to minimize the spacing and laser power throughput of an aperture. Also investigated was the effectiveness of a non-circular aperture, which has approximately triangular configuration in combination with polarized light in simultaneously improving spatial resolution and increasing signal output. In this paper, we confirmed the predicted effectiveness on more practical condition of both high speed and compactness of head construction using a sub-micrometer size non-circular aperture, which was mounted on a 1.5-mm-long miniaturized optical head slider, flying above a ROM medium having sub-100-nm-long chromium patterns. The influence of the electric-field direction of the incident light and aperture to medium spacing on the readout signal are carefully evaluated by flying the aperture at spacing down to less than 50 nm.     

Improved safety mode considering external shock direction for near-field recording system using SIL

To increase the near-field coupling efficiency in a near-field recording (NFR) system, extremely small air gap (less than 100?nm) between the solid immersion lens (SIL) and media should be maintained. However, maintaining the air gap is very important and difficult. Despite various anti-shock control methods, there are physical limitations to controlling the air gap against external shock. A safety mode that moves the actuator to the initial position for large external shock is currently being used. The existing safety mode exhibits good performance for downward shocks of 6?G amplitude and 10?ms duration time, but some problems arise for upward shocks of 3?G amplitude and 10?ms duration time. To avoid collision for upward and downward shocks, we present an improved safety mode that considers the direction of the external shock for an SIL-based near-field recording system. We analyzed the upward and downward shock responses of the NFR system. The shape of the pulse input was designed to minimize the overshoot of the actuator. Through various experiments, the amplitude and duration time of the pulse input were optimized. Even with an upward shock with 8?G and 10?ms, no collision was observed between the actuator and the media by using the improved safety mode with the optimized pulse input.     

Application of megasonic cleaner to sub-micron particles of SIL optical flying head

 As the demand for large capacity storage drives has increased, the flying height of near-field recording (NFR) sliders becomes as small as 100 nm for super high storage density. Accordingly contamination problems have been a concern of information storage industry because it may cause a serious damage to solid immersion lens (SIL) of optical flying head. Sub-micro contaminants in air bearing of the NFR slider may affect the flyability and stability of the optical slider. In addition, the cleaning of small particles becomes more difficult as the contaminant particle size decreases because the adhesion force increases very much as the particle size decreases. Recently developed high-frequency ultrasonic (megasonic) cleaning technique have made it possible to remove sub-micron particles less than 100 nm without surface erosion and many remarkable results have been reported. In this paper, the megasonic technique is applied and tested for the cleaning of the flying head of NFR drive. 1 MHz ultrasound with maximum 100 W was used to remove polystyrene latex (PSL) particles and alumina particles deposited on the surface of the slider. Effective cleaning performance was observed without any damages on the slider surface using optical microscope and AFM at different ultrasonic energy levels and cleaning times. Received: 20 June 2002 / Accepted: 9 September 2002     

Design of near-field recording optics using truncated hemispherical SIL with cover-layer incident dual recording layers

In this paper, we propose a novel optics design for media inside near-field recording (NFR) using a truncated hemispherical solid immersion lens (HMS). To obtain strong advantage of data protection and high data capacity simultaneously, a truncated HMS based near field optics with cover-layer incident dual recording layers is designed. In this design, to improve the small optical tolerance of the truncated HMS unit and to adjust dual focusing positions, an additional aspheric lens surface is added on top of the truncated HMS and it is combined with zoom optics composed of two single lenses having a low numerical aperture (NA). Also, to compensate for chromatic aberration, which is a serious problem for optics using a blue laser diode, a diffractive optical element is also designed. Using zoom optics, an additional aspheric lens surface, and a diffractive optical element together, the wavefront aberration and chromatic aberration are effectively reduced in a broad range of cover-layer thicknesses and wavelength variations. In addition, in this paper, the effect of a gap induced aberration is investigated by analyzing the different behavior of each TM and TE wave for the cover-layer incident NFR optics.Paper presented at the 15th Annual Symposium on Information Storage and Processing Systems, Santa Clara, CA, USA, 28–29 June, 2005.     

Micro-measurement using grating microscopy

In this paper, two quantitative methods to measure micro-deformation using grating microscopy are proposed, a grating diffraction method and a full-field grating phase-shift method. A compact optical transmitting microscope with white light source is reconstructed by developing a loading and recording system. For direct strain measurement, a grating diffraction method is presented. With the help of a Bertrand lens, the Fourier spectrum of the grating is formed on the CCD sensor plane with high image quality. Software for precise, fast and automatic determination of the diffraction spot centroids is developed. Local strains are thus measured with high resolution. For the deformation measurement, a phase-shifting grating microscope method with high sensitivity and spatial resolution is proposed. Phase-shifting is based on the slab refraction effect and is realized via a tilting compensator. The system possesses a high spatial resolution (1 μm), and a displacement precision of 0.1–0.03 μm. The combination of the grating diffraction method and the phase-shifting method in the same test provides simultaneous measurement of strain and displacement, thus demonstrating that the grating techniques are viable in the microscope environment.     

Two- and three-dimensional visualization of the living cornea and ocular lens

This paper describes the visualization of the living cornea and the in-situ ocular lens. Laser scanning confocal microscopy of a freshly enucleated rabbit eye was performed to obtain two-dimensional optical sections. These optical sections were used to reconstruct the three-dimensional views of the cornea and ocular lens using the volume-rendering method. In the reflected light mode the cornea and the ocular lens are almost transparent and have extremely low contrast when observed in a normal light microscope. The images obtained with the confocal light microscope system shows submicron resolution in the image plane. The confocal light microscope provides high resolution, high contrast images of living ocular tissue. The image quality of the resulting confocal images rivals that obtained from electron microscope of fixed, stained, and coated tissue specimens. This paper demonstrates the quality of confocal microscope images and the feasibility of their three-dimensional reconstruction using computer volume-rendering techniques.     

A toroidal‐lens designed structure for static type table‐top floating image system with horizontal parallax function

A new structure of horizontal parallax table‐top floating image system with toroidal‐lens optical film was developed. In this design, the circular arranged pico‐projectors limit the angular resolution of this system and display the floating image for surrounding viewing zones. In addition, the pinhole array and toroidal‐lens layer compose the optical film in the system and correspond with each other; both of them could be considered as a repeatable unit to control the spatial resolution of image. After passing through the optical film, the direction, position, shape, and divergence angle of light field could be controlled as fan ray, which has a widely scattered angle in latitude and high directivity in longitude direction. Moreover, to confirm the optical properties, the proposed structure was built in the commercially optical software, LightTools v8.3, which is widely used in the simulation of light distribution. Based on the imaging principle and the inverse light tracking method, displaying floating image with circular viewing zones would be achieved.     

Design of an integrated optical pickup with NA of 0.85 for small form factor optical disk drives

We design an integrated optical pickup for small form factor optical disk drives. The specifications of the pickup are compatible with those of the Blu-ray disk (BD) in terms of numerical aperture (NA) of the objective lens, the wavelength of the laser diode, and the thickness of the cover layer. The objective lens unit with NA of 0.85 consists of two aspherical refractive lenses and a diffractive optical element for compensation of the chromatic aberration. Each element of objective lens unit will be fabricated on a wafer as an array type, and the three wafers will be aligned and bonded to form an objective lens array. Therefore, elements of the objective lens unit are designed to have sufficient alignment tolerances for various directions such as de-center and tilt. The optical performances of the objective lens unit are evaluated by simulation against various disturbances such as wavelength change of emitting light from laser diode, misalignments, etc. We also design a quarter wave plate, a polarized holographic optical element, and the shape of photodiode integrated circuit array to generate focusing and tracking error signals. The entire height of the pickup including working distance is 2 mm, and the effective pupil diameter of the objective lens unit is less than 1 mm.     

Development of optical gap sensor application to near field recording

For applying near-field recording (NFR) technology to optical storage devices for the next generation, it is positively necessary to maintain a small air gap under about 100 nm. We design an apparatus to measure the air gap between the CISD type SIL [1] and the interface of dielectric substrate of the disk. And it consists of a prism, a polarizer and an analyzer. The air gap including the far-field as well as the near-field range is determined by measuring the intensity of polarized reflectance light. Through the Fresnel equation and Jones matrices, a mathematical model is established to understand the characteristics of a system according to design parameters. We can change measurement ranges/resolutions by adjusting an incident angle into the air interface. Experimental results for some specific cases are in good agreement with simulated ones and demonstrate the possiblity as a new optical gap detector.This work was funded by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) through the Center for Information Storage Device (CISD) Grant No. R11-1997-006101-0 and the Korea Sanhak Foundation.Paper presented at the 13th Annual Symposium on Information Storage and Processing Systems, Santa Clara, CA, USA, 17–18 June, 2002     

Design of compact projection lenses using double‐layered diffractive optical elements

Abstract— Based on several special properties of diffractive optical elements (DOEs) such as savings in mass and to freely modulate the wavefront of incident light, a new compact projection lens with double‐layered DOEs is presented. It is comprised of five lenses and has nearly half the weight of its original structure. The modulation transfer function (MTF) value on‐axis is 0.7 at a spatial frequency of 33 lp/mm and more than 0.3 for all off‐axis values, which satisfies the requirement of a color‐filter‐type liquid‐crystal‐on‐silicon (LCoS) 0.59‐in. display with a SVGA resolution. The maximum distortion is 0.46%.     

Narrowing of a light spot at diffraction of linearly-polarized beam on binary asymmetric axicons

To compensate widening of the central light spot which inevitably arises at linear polarization of a beam illuminating high-numerical-aperture axicon we propose to introduce an asymmetry in axicon structure. Experimental research of diffraction of Gaussian beam by three types of binary microaxicons with the period close to wavelength was carried out by means of near-field microscope. Diffractive optical elements with the period of 500 nanometers and various height of a microrelief have been fabricated by e-beam lithography. Narrowing of a central light spot formed by asymmetric microaxicons was experimentally confirmed. Overcoming of the diffraction limit (down to FWHM = 0.32λ) was observed in a near zone.     

In-situ fabrication of an out-of-plane microlens with pre-definable focal length

Out-of-plane microlenses are an important component for integrated optics. Unlike their in-plane counterparts, the fabrication of out-of-plane microlenses is more complicated, which limits their applications. In this paper, a new technique that is capable of fabricating out-of-plane microlenses is described. The resulting lenses have pre-definable focal length and can focus light beams not only in the horizontal plane, but also in the vertical plane. The fabrication process is completely compatible with the soft lithography technique. The lens chamber with two thin polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membranes was designed and fabricated together with microfluidic or other components using the same UV lithography mask. The lens was then formed in an in-situ fashion. Curable polymers were injected into the lens chamber and cured while pneumatic pressure was applied to keep the PDMS membranes deformed in a quasi-spherical profile. Pneumatic pressure and membrane thickness can be adjusted to control the resulting lens focal length. With a group of lens chambers with different membrane thickness, a single pressure line can be used to fabricate microlenses with different focal lengths. Since cured polymer was used as the lens filling material, the resulting lens can be used without a pressure source. Different polymers can be selected for desirable optical properties. The simulation and experimental results have proved the feasibility of this technique and resulting lens showed good focusing ability for a divergent light beam from an on-chip multi-mode optical fiber. The small design footprint, total compatibility with soft lithography and technical versatility of this technique make it particularly useful for intergrating out-of-plane microlens into microfluidic chips, which may open new possibilities for the development of on-chip optical detection system.     

用于微观几何形状测量的扫描探针显微技术

随着微技术的发展,对微观结构的精确测量变得越来越重要。对能够用于微观几何形状测量的扫描探针显微技术———扫描隧道显微术(STM)、扫描光学近场显微术(SNOM)和原子力显微术(AFM)进行了比较详细的分析和介绍。     

Microplastic lens array fabricated by a hot intrusion process

A microplastic lens array has been successfully constructed on top of a 500-/spl mu/m-thick PC (Polycarbonate film) by using a micro hot intrusion process. A single-layer LIGA process is used to fabricate the high-aspect-ratio nickel mold insert that has circular hole patterns of 80 /spl mu/m in diameter and 200 /spl mu/m in depth. Under the hot intrusion process, plastic material can be intruded into these circular-shape holes and stopped at desired depth under elevated temperature and pressure to fabricate microlenses. By adjusting the embossing load, temperature and time, the curvature and height of the lens are controllable when the same mold insert is used. The optical properties of these microlenses have been characterized and the average radius of curvature is found as 41.4 /spl mu/m with a standard deviation of 1.05 /spl mu/m. Experimental characterization and theoretical model are conducted and developed for the micro-intrusion process in terms of the radius of curvature and height of the lenses and they correspond well with experimental data within 5% of variations. The focusing capability of the lenses is demonstrated by comparing the images of laser light with and without using the lenses. When the projection screen is placed 200 /spl mu/m away from the lens, the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) for the lens is 110 /spl mu/m while the original FWHM of the optical fiber is 300 /spl mu/m.