Chinese and Russian scientists have found a way to increase the resolution of nanoscopes

Scientists from College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University and Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics in cooperation colleagues from Tomsk Polytechnic University and Tomsk State University found a way to increase at least 10 times the resolution of the most powerful optical microscopes – nanoscopes. The results of their research were published in the journal Nanomaterials.

Scientists have proposed using an additional microlens with nano-deepening. "Modeling and calculations have shown that in this way the resolution can be increased at least 10 times," said the research leader, doctor of technical sciences, senior researcher at the TPU electronic engineering department, Igor Minin.

He explained that the principle of operation of a traditional nanoscope is based on the so-called photon jet effect, which allows increasing the resolution to 50 nanometers. A further increase in resolution was limited by the thickness of this jet. The laws of physics make it impossible to make it smaller than a certain value.

"The introduction of such a nano-deepening allows us to compress the field of photon jet localization" – one of the authors of research, Yinghui Cao explained to Xinhua.

In the future, using a nanoscope with such a high resolution, will make it possible to examine, for example, the structure of a live virus.

The Chinese scientist added that such microlenses with nano-deepening are important for further research on super-high-resolution technology, including sub-diffraction imaging, interferometry, optical tweezers, etc.