While optics is the topic in focus, I thought that other holidayers might be interested to read about superlenses. These promise to bring electron microscope resolution to optical microscopes. We are not quite there yet, but it seems that we might be there soon.

Superlens

Sounds like great fun. Be nice if they’re cheap enough to plug into a home computer.

Bubble Car said:

Sounds like great fun. Be nice if they’re cheap enough to plug into a home computer.

Yes, it would. The cheapest electron microscope at the moment is around $70k.

Seems pretty hyped-up, they are talking about the best resolution going from 200 to 100 nanometres.

Also I don’t see how having “negative refraction” gets around the diffraction limit.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Seems pretty hyped-up, they are talking about the best resolution going from 200 to 100 nanometres.

Also I don’t see how having “negative refraction” gets around the diffraction limit.

Yes, it is a bit hyped up. They did put the size in context: 1/1000th of the width of a human hair ;-)

I don’t claim to understand the physics of it, but the concept has been around for a long time and there have been some recent advances, such as a thin silver film lens that has been used for photo-etching on the nano scale. There is a wiki summary of the concept and developments.

It seems like something that might well come to pass soon, looking at the advancements and browsing a few papers.

Cheap, simple high resolution microscopes would be nice.

morrie said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Seems pretty hyped-up, they are talking about the best resolution going from 200 to 100 nanometres.

Also I don’t see how having “negative refraction” gets around the diffraction limit.

Yes, it is a bit hyped up. They did put the size in context: 1/1000th of the width of a human hair ;-)

I don’t claim to understand the physics of it, but the concept has been around for a long time and there have been some recent advances, such as a thin silver film lens that has been used for photo-etching on the nano scale. There is a wiki summary of the concept and developments.

It seems like something that might well come to pass soon, looking at the advancements and browsing a few papers.

Cheap, simple high resolution microscopes would be nice.

Indeed they would.. Perhaps contact Jim Frazier?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superlens

There they talk about 3 times better resolution than the diffraction limit.

Stilww would be nice to have a straightforward account of how they work though.