Hyper-NA imaging with solid-immersion optics and induced polarization imaging

Abstract

Solid immersion lens (SIL) is used in microscopic systems for hyper numerical aperture (NA) imaging. The NA of the SIL microscope can be larger than 2 by using the high refractive index SIL. In this paper, examples of hyper-NA (NA>1.4) imaging are illustrated, including a normal SIL microscope for imaging samples like CPU chips, photomasks which have no cover layer and a special SIL microscope for imaging samples like Blu-Ray optical discs which have cover layer to protect the pattern. In both cases, good contrast images can be achieved by minimizing the system aberration. At the end, characteristics of induced polarization imaging (imaging through crossed polarizers) and a twostep solid immersion lens using Gallium Phosphide (GaP) (NA~2) are discussed.