Using light to measure ever-smaller objects has been central to progress in many scientific disciplines for centuries. As far back as 1873, German physicist Ernst Abbe proved that light diffraction ...

The 3D micro-device consists of a modified coverslip and a micro-sphere fabricated by advanced MPL. It can enhance the lateral resolution beyond what is achievable with conventional optics. Today, ...

A 1.98-square-micrometer QR code, etched into ceramic thin film and verified by Guinness, showcases a new approach to ...

For hundreds of years, the optical microscope was the only tool available to scientists wanting to study the movement of cells, bacteria and yeast. But the diffraction of light made it impossible to ...

Microscopy is an imaging technique that enables us to see a world that would otherwise be invisible to us. Once upon a time, visualizing cells, microbes and other entities not perceptible to the naked ...

Introduction to SNOM: The Scanning Near-field Optical Microscope (SNOM) stands as a pivotal analytical tool in nanotechnology, enabling the visualization of nanostructures with resolution beyond the ...

A project at Swiss research center EPFL has designed an add-on unit intended to bring structured light capability to a standard optical microscope. Described in Nature Communications, the design ...

An international team of researchers has shown that superconductivity can be modified by coupling a superconductor to a dark electromagnetic cavity. The research opens the door to the control of a ...

It’s relatively easy to understand how optical microscopes work at low magnifications: one lens magnifies an image, the next magnifies the already-magnified image, and so on until it reaches the eye ...