ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one of the emerging super-resolution techniques, plasmonic structured illumination microscopy (PSIM), which combines tunable surface plasmon interference with the structured illumination microscopy (SIM) technique to achieve more than two times' resolution improvement compared to conventional fluorescence microscopy. To demonstrate the imaging capability, Wei et al. provided two specific designs for PSIM purpose, utilizing thick-metal-film/dielectric and thin-metal-film/dielectric structures. Among super-resolution imaging techniques, SIM is a method of special interest due to its widefield, high-speed subdiffraction-limited imaging capability. Surface plasmons are electromagnetic excitations formed by the collective oscillation of the free electrons at a metal–dielectric interface. The associated electromagnetic waves possess in-plane wavevectors larger than that of the photon in the same dielectric media and therefore exponentially decay away from the interface. SPs are widely used in nanophotonics and subwavelength-scale research due to their unique dispersion properties and relatively large wavevector.
