Chemical Vapor Deposition of Nanometric Materials by Optical Near-Fields: Toward Nano-Photonic Integration

Abstract

Optical near-fields have been applied to various fields, including spatially high resolution microscopy, spectroscopy, ultra high density optical memory, and atom manipulation [1–3]. In the case of microscopy, high-resolution beyond the diffraction limit has been enabling observation of a 4 nm-width image of a single strand DNA [4]. Spatial Fourier analysis has estimated that the resolution has reached as high as 0.8 nm [5]. The basic process governing near-field optics is the short-range electromagnetic interaction between the probe tip and the sample in the optical frequency region. If this interaction is sufficiently strong, the sample structure and conformation can be optically modified, and thus this modification can lead to new applications, such as the fabrication of nanometric materials and the manipulation of atoms.