Fabrication of a probe-lens device for scanning super-resolution imaging platform

We present a simple and flexible approach for building a microsphere-based probe that can be used for a scanning super-resolution imaging platform. We assembled microspheres with a microprobe and manipulate the microspheres as secondary lens across the specimen surface. The achieved resolution enhancement surpasses conventional 100x/0.90 objective lens under white light illumination by adding an additional 4.6x magnification factor, allowing the platform to resolve features as small as 100nm. The work reported here advances the research field of microlens based super-resolution imaging in at least two aspects: 1) development of a process to stably and rapidly bond microspheres (as small as 20μm) on a microprobe for nanoscale scanning in 3D space; 2) realization of large field-of-view (i.e., much large than the field-of-view of a single spherical lens) sub-diffraction limited features by image-patching techniques. We foresee that the device described here can be incorporated with ultra-precision 3D scanning stages to further improve its super-resolution imaging capability in the future.