Scanning near-field optical microscopy

Scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) has become a widespread technique due to its promising ability of imaging with sub-micron resolution. Despite being developed over more than one decade, SNOM is still not a mature technique, which can be seen from the large number of recent publications describing instrumentational innovations. However, there are also many applications of near-field microscopy to the observation of thin organic film systems, which are supplementary to other techniques and demonstrate the usefulness of the technique.