SEPTEMBER 1998 REPORT FOR

W. CHARLES SYMONS, III

The first priority last month was to submit a preliminary abstract for the 1999 Pittsburgh Conference. This preliminary abstract entitled Near-IR Spectral Imaging Beyond the Diffraction Limit can be linked to and read online. In addition to the abstract, I completed teaching EE221 (Circuits II). As expected, this class took up most of my time but it did prove to be a very enjoyable, worthwhile, and rewarding experience. Once this class was complete, however, I turned my attention to incorporating the Melles Griot Nanoblock M piezo stage into a traditional optical microscope. In this manner, the NSOM instrument, pictured in Figure 1 below, will be a more useful instrument. That is, without the incorporation of the traditional optical microscope, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to place the subwavelength probe of the NSOM anywhere near the sample to be imaged.

Figure 1: Current NSOM Instrument Prototype.