Evaluation of Lateral Resolution for Confocal Raman Microscopy Using Gold Nano-Lines Made by Electron Beam Lithography

Assessing the instrumental resolution of confocal Raman microscopy is a key aspect in 2D or 3D imaging in various applications. An important issue in this regard is the experimental measurement of a lateral resolution for the Raman microscope system. Several methods have been proposed for the resolution measurement in fluorescence microscopy; however, these methods have rather limited applications. In this paper, we demonstrate an experimental approach for evaluating the lateral resolution with well-defined nano-patterns in confocal Raman microscopy and discuss the factors that can improve estimation of instrumental resolution. This study contributes to the further understanding of the assessment of instrumental resolution in confocal scanning Raman microscopy.