The super-resolution techniques (STED, PALM, STORM) require fluorescent labels and the main disadvantages of fluorescent microscopy techniques are the connection between laser wavelength and fluorescent marker and also the difficulty to attach the marker to the interesting region of the samples. Moreover, they may not attach to correct molecule or functional group of interest that create problems in interpreting images.

Apertureless scanning near field optical microscopy (A-SNOM) is a free label microscopy technique able to overcome the optical diffraction limit on spatial resolution. s-SNOM lateral resolution is independent of excitation wavelength and depends only on illuminated tip size. s-SNOM has attracted massive interest in the past couple of decades because of its capabilities for probing the optical properties of unlabeled samples at sub-diffraction resolutions.

The presentation will include details about near-field microscopy techniques. Also, the existing facilities within the Microscopy Center - microanalysis and Information Processing and some results obtained by using microscopy in the field specifically in the fields of Materials Science and Life Sciences will be presented.

Dr. George A. Stanciu is Professor of Physics at National University of Science and Technology Politehnica of Bucharest. He is head of Center for Microscopy-Microanalysis and Information Processing founded by him in 2001. He got his Doctor degree (Ph. D.) in Technical Physics in 1981. He received the Professor title in 1994. Starting with 1973 he has been working in the Laser Scanning Microscopy field. In 1977 his team reported the first Digital Laser Scanning Microscope.

He has been working for long time in the frame of laser scanning microscopy (instrumentation and applications) and in the scanning probe microscopy (instrumentation and applications). In the last he was focused on biological application of different scanning laser microscopy techniques.

George Stanciu is associated editors at:

• Frontiers: Journal of Biotechnology and Nanotechnology
• Scientific reports (Nature Groups)
• Optical and Quatum Electronics
• Coatings
• International Journal of Nanomaterials, Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine, Peertechz -GIT Imaging and Microscopy;
• Guangxi Sciences

He is Senior Member of IEEE and Fellow Member of International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM).