Shape Reconstruction Based on a New Blurring Model at the Micro/Nanometer Scale

Real-time observation of three-dimensional (3D) information has great significance in nanotechnology. However, normal nanometer scale observation techniques, including transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and scanning probe microscopy (SPM), have some problems to obtain 3D information because they lack non-destructive, intuitive, and fast imaging ability under normal conditions, and optical methods have not widely used in micro/nanometer shape reconstruction due to the practical requirements and the imaging limitations in micro/nano manipulation. In this paper, a high resolution shape reconstruction method based on a new optical blurring model is proposed. Firstly, the heat diffusion physics equation is analyzed and the optical diffraction model is modified to directly explain the basic principles of image blurring resulting from depth variation. Secondly, a blurring imaging model is proposed based on curve fitting of a 4th order polynomial curve. The heat diffusion equations combined with the blurring imaging are introduced, and their solution is transformed into a dynamic optimization problem. Finally, the experiments with a standard nanogrid, an atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilever and a microlens have been conducted. The experiments prove that the proposed method can reconstruct 3D shapes at the micro/nanometer scale, and the minimal reconstruction error is 3 nm.