Photopolymerization induced by optical field enhancement in the vicinity of a conducting tip under laser illumination

We introduce a method of local photopolymerization in the submicrometer scale. The source used is a metallic tip whose extremity presents a strong localized optical near-field enhancement (FE) when the tip is illuminated by a laser beam suitably polarized. The FE permits the polymerization threshold dose to be locally exceeded at the tip extremity while the threshold is not reached elsewhere. By this method the formation of micronic/nanometric polymer dots has been demonstrated. The preliminary results presented here validate experimentally the concept of the local optical source issued from a conducting tip.