Development of Nanometric Light Spot for Electron-Beam Excitation Assisted Optical Microscope

Abstract

We optimized fabrication condition of ZnO luminescent thin film for electron-beam excitation assisted (EXA) optical microscope. 200 nm gold nanoparticles were observed by EXA microscope using ZnO thin films fabricated at different substrate temperature. ZnO thin films deposited at 400－600℃ can provide a higher signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio than films deposited at 200-300℃. In this research, film deposited at 400℃ was suitable for EXA microscope because the grain size of ZnO film was small and cathodoluminescence intensity was high enough to construct the EXA microscopic image. This ZnO film is a possible candidate for the dynamic observation of living cells with high spatial resolution with EXA microscope.