Near-field acoustic microscope

1002202-150

[DEFINITION]
A microscope that measures supersonic radiation intensity through a pinhole extremely close to specimen while scanning the pinhole in a raster pattern to obtain high resolution acoustic images.

[DESCRIPTION]
The near-field acoustic microscope is one of the near-field microscopes. It is also called as the scanning near-field supersonic microscope. A near-field acoustic microscope can draw an image of acoustic mutual reactions within a specimen by the use of supersonic waves as the signal source. Although it uses acoustic waves, its resolution can be hightened better than one micrometer by the use of a microscopic pinhole. Horizontal resolution of recent units is about 0.1 micrometer. However, reducing the size of the pinhole weakens the signal intensity, and highly sensitive receivers are required to get a better resolution.

[References]
(1)(28)

[Related Terms]
Scanning probe microscope (SPM)