Structured illumination microscopy with extreme ultraviolet pulses

The relentless pursuit of understanding matter at ever-finer scales has pushed optical microscopy to surpass the diffraction limit and realize super-resolution microscopy, which enables visualizing structures shorter than the wavelength of the light emitted by the sample. In the present work, we harnessed extreme ultraviolet beams to create sub-µm grating structures, which were revealed by extreme ultraviolet structured illumination microscopy. We establish that the resolution extension is achievable in the extreme ultraviolet, thereby opening the door to significant resolution enhancement, mainly defined by the wavelength employed.