Super-resolution imaging enabled by metamaterial-assisted speckle illumination nanoscopy

Structured illumination microscope (SIM) enables high temporal resolution wide field-of-view super-resolution imaging but typically provides only two-fold resolution improvement over the diffraction limit. We report speckle metamaterial-assisted illumination nanoscopy (Speckle-MAIN) which brings the resolution down to 40nm and beyond. A hyperbolic metamaterial structure is implemented as substrate to generate deep sub-wavelength speckle-like illumination pattern at the near field of the metamaterial. Fluorescent objects are illuminated by such high spatial-frequency near field illuminations and are reconstructed by a Blind-SIM algorithm. Speckle-MAIN provides a new route for low-cost easy-implemented super-resolution imaging with ultra-high resolution and biocompatibility.