Superlens (original) (raw)

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A superlens, or super lens, is a lens which uses metamaterials to go beyond the diffraction limit. For example, in 1995, Guerra combined a transparent grating having 50nm lines and spaces (the "metamaterial") with a conventional microscope immersion objective. The resulting "superlens" resolved a silicon sample also having 50nm lines and spaces, far beyond the classical diffraction limit imposed by the illumination having 650nm wavelength in air. The diffraction limit is a feature of conventional lenses and microscopes that limits the fineness of their resolution depending on the illumination wavelength and the numerical aperture NA of the objective lens. Many lens designs have been proposed that go beyond the diffraction limit in some way, but constraints and obstacles face each of them.