This NER proposal is based on the recently introduced new design of an optical microscope, which theoretically could reach resolution down to a scale of a few nanometers. In this new design a regular optical microscope is supplemented by a two-dimensional optical arrangement, which utilizes surface electromagnetic waves called surface plasmon-polaritons. These two-dimensional light waves have an unusual combination of nanometer scale wavelengths and visible-range frequencies, which means that the theoretical diffraction limit on resolution of an optical microscope may be pushed down to nanometer-scale values defined by the short wavelengths of plasmon-polaritons. Such a microscope has the potential to become a valuable tool in medical and biological imaging, where far-field optical imaging of individual viruses and DNA molecules may become reality. In addition, used in reverse such a microscope may be utilized in nanometer-scale optical lithography. The development of the proposed novel microscopy and nanolithography tools may have profound impacts on technology and society on many levels. We can envision building new inexpensive optical microscopes, which would look and cost very much like regular optical microscopes in a high school biology class, while allowing direct visualization of biomaterials (such as viruses and DNA molecules) on the 30-50 nm scale. Such a development would open the "nano-universe" to very broad layers of our society.
