A "super lens" made of foil manages to capture details the size of a hundredth of a red blood cell
Popular Sciences
Attention, lovers of small details: with the help of a tiny piece of foil, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley managed to create a "super lens" that manages to capture details the size of a hundredth of a red blood cell. The development may pave the way for the production of highly sensitive medical scanners, faster computers and CDs on which all Library of Congress software can be stored.
In glass lenses, the photographs are created by capturing the reflected light rays. However, these lenses are unable to capture the rays that dissipate and disappear even before they reach the lens. Because of this, even the most powerful lenses available today are unable to focus on details smaller than 400 nanometers.
The researchers discovered how to detect and amplify these rays with the help of foil. When the rays reach the thin piece of foil, they spin the electrons in the upper metal layer and create a kind of antenna that amplifies the light rays and focuses them on this point. In order to illustrate the phenomenon, the researchers stuck a piece of foil, which serves as a super lens, between a chrome plate on which the word NANO was stamped and a polymer coating that is sensitive to ultraviolet light. When the researchers illuminated the plate with ultraviolet light, the lens was able to reveal details with a size of only 60 nanometers.
The next challenge: to identify the dissipating rays and amplify them from an even greater distance. Only then will it be possible to use the lens to scan a patient's blood or create a particularly dense CD.
