表面等离子体平面金属透镜及其应用

由于衍射极限的存在,传统光学透镜成像分辨率理论上只能达到入射光波长的一半。通过恢复和增强携带物体细部特征信息的高频倏逝波,基于表面等离子体的平面金属透镜有望突破这种光学衍射极限,实现超分辨成像。本文对平面薄膜式与纳米结构式两类平面金属透镜进行了综述,详细介绍了若干典型平面金属透镜的结构设计、工作机理及其聚焦性能,并对其特点与存在的问题进行了分析与讨论。由于光波在金属中传播时存在一定损耗,如何更高效地增强高频倏逝波信号并转换成传播波,使其参与成像,以更好地实现远场超分辨成像,以及如何进一步增大近场超高分辨率聚焦光斑焦深以及减小远场聚焦光斑尺寸,是表面等离子体平面金属透镜进一步研究的重点。

Planar plasmonic lenses and their applications

The imaging resolution of conventional optical lenses is generally restricted to half the incident wavelength by the diffraction limit due to the decay of evanescent waves. Planar metallic lenses based on surface plasmons offer the possibility to overcome this limit by the enhancement of evanescent waves which carrying detailed feature information of object. In this paper, the structural design, physical mechanism and focusing performance of two types of typical planar metallic lenses are reviewed. Moreover, the existing problems in this imaging technology are discussed. Because there is a certain loss when the light propagates in the metal, how to more effectively enhance the high frequency evanescent wave signal and convert it to propagation wave which can participate in the imaging in order to better achieve the far-field super-resolution imaging, and how to further increase the ultra high resolution near-field focal depth of focusing spot and reduce size of the far-field focusing spot, are further research focuses of the surface plasmonic planar metallic lenses.