Development of a Controlled Environment Near‐Field Optical Microscope for Organic Thin Film Studies

Abstract The requirements of a microscope differ greatly from field to field and with the sample being studied. Organic thin films are highly sensitive to environmental conditions being rapidly photobleached in the presence of oxygen. In this paper we introduce the design of a low cost near field optical microscope suitable for environmentally controlled studies. We demonstrate that reducing ambient pressure to ∼10 mTorr (1.3 Pa) of nitrogen (a …