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Thermal radiation scanning tunnelling microscopy

Nature volume 444, pages 740–743 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

In standard near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM), a subwavelength probe acts as an optical ‘stethoscope’ to map the near field produced at the sample surface by external illumination1. This technique has been applied using visible1,2, infrared3, terahertz4 and gigahertz5,6 radiation to illuminate the sample, providing a resolution well beyond the diffraction limit. NSOM is well suited to study surface waves such as surface plasmons7 or surface-phonon polaritons8. Using an aperture NSOM with visible laser illumination, a near-field interference pattern around a corral structure has been observed9, whose features were similar to the scanning tunnelling microscope image of the electronic waves in a quantum corral10. Here we describe an infrared NSOM that operates without any external illumination: it is a near-field analogue of a night-vision camera, making use of the thermal infrared evanescent fields emitted by the surface, and behaves as an optical scanning tunnelling microscope11,12. We therefore term this instrument a ‘thermal radiation scanning tunnelling microscope’ (TRSTM). We show the first TRSTM images of thermally excited surface plasmons, and demonstrate spatial coherence effects in near-field thermal emission.

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Figure 1: Detection of the thermal radiation scanning tunnelling microscope (TRSTM) signal.
Figure 2: Analysing the origin of the TRSTM signal.
Figure 3: EM-LDOS measurement by TRSTM.
Figure 4: EM-LDOS images.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A.C. Boccara for comments and L. Aigouy for AFM measurements on the samples. This work was supported by the Ministère délégué à la Recherche (programme ACI Jeunes chercheurs) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Florian Formanek

    Present address: Nanophotonics Laboratory-RIKEN, Wako, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan

  2. Jean-Philippe Mulet

    Present address: Saint-Gobain Recherche, 39 Quai Lucien Lefranc, 93300, Aubervilliers, France

  3. Yannick De Wilde, Florian Formanek and Jean-Philippe Mulet: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Optique Physique, Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, CNRS-UPR A0005, 10 rue Vauquelin, Paris, 75005, France

    Yannick De Wilde, Florian Formanek & Paul-Arthur Lemoine

  2. Laboratoire EM2C, Ecole Centrale Paris, CNRS, Grande Voie des Vignes, 92295, Châtenay-Malabry Cedex, France

    Rémi Carminati, Jean-Philippe Mulet & Jean-Jacques Greffet

  3. Institut Fresnel, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques de St Jérôme, CNRS, case 161, Avenue Escadrille Normandie-Niemen, 13397, Marseille, cedex 20, France

    Boris Gralak

  4. Laboratoire d’Etudes Thermiques, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et d’Aérotechnique, BP 109, 86960, Futuroscope Cedex, France

    Karl Joulain

  5. Laboratoire de Photonique et de Nanostructures, CNRS, Route de Nozay, 91460, Marcoussis, France

    Yong Chen

  6. Département de Chimie, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 24 Rue Lhomond, 75231, Paris, Cedex 05, France

    Florian Formanek

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Correspondence to Yannick De Wilde.

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De Wilde, Y., Formanek, F., Carminati, R. et al. Thermal radiation scanning tunnelling microscopy. Nature 444, 740–743 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05265

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