We study how nanophotonic structures can be used for determining the position of a nearby nanoscale object with subwavelength accuracy. Through perturbing the near-field environment of a metasurface transducer consisting of nano-apertures in a metallic film, the location of the nanoscale object is transduced into the transducer’s far-field optical response. By monitoring the scattering pattern of the nanophotonic near-field transducer and comparing it to measured reference data, we demonstrate the two-dimensional localization of the object accurate to 24 nm across an area of 2 × 2 μm. We find that adding complexity to the nanophotonic transducer allows localization over a larger area while maintaining resolution, as it enables encoding more information on the position of the object in the transducer’s far-field response.

Walter de Gruyter GmbH
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
doi.org/10.1515/nanoph-2020-0669
Nanophotonics
Photonic Forces

Wolterink, T., Buijs, R., Gerini, G., Koenderink, F., & Verhagen, E. (2021). Localizing nanoscale objects using nanophotonic near-field transducers. Nanophotonics, 10(6), 1723–1732. doi:10.1515/nanoph-2020-0669