Abstract

The problem of observation of individual light-absorbing microobjects on surfaces (these may be molecules, color centers, impurity ions, etc.) is one of the most interesting and fundamental problem in surface physics, materials science, biophysics, etc. One possibility to solve this problem is to use the recently developed near-field scanning optical microscopy, but this can be problematic in the case of low optical absorption and fluorescence of the microobjects studied. In this report, we present the first experimental results on the realization of another approach based on the laser resonance photoionization of light-absorbing centers on a surface, followed by the observation of the electrons emitted with a high spatial resolution by means of projection photoelectron microscopy. Spatial resolution as high as 30 nm has been achieved, and this enabled us to observe for the first time individual color centers on the surface of a LiF crystal.

© 1996 Optical Society of America