Exploiting evanescent-wave amplification for subwavelength low-contrast particle detection

The classical problem of subwavelength particle detection on a flat surface is especially challenging when the refractive index of the particle is close to that of the substrate. We demonstrate a method to improve the detection ability several times for such a situation, by enhancing the "forbidden" evanescent waves in the substrate using the...

Radially Polarized Light for Detection and Nanolocalization of Dielectric Particles on a Planar Substrate

A fast noninvasive method based on scattering from a focused radially polarized light to detect and localize subwavelength nanoparticles on a substrate is presented. The technique relies on polarization matching in the far field between scattered and spurious reflected fields. Results show a localization uncertainty of ?10?4?2 is possible for a...

Coherent Fourier scatterometry for detection of nanometer-sized particles on a planar substrate surface

Inspection tools for nano-particle contamination on a planar substrate surface is a critical problem in micro-electronics. The present solutions are either expensive and slow or inexpensive and fast but have low sensitivity because of limitations due to diffraction. Most of them are also substrate specific. In this article we report how Coherent...

Interferometric coherent Fourier scatterometry: a method for obtaining high sensitivity in the optical inverse-grating problem