A. M. Glowacki, C. Helfmeier, U. Kerst, C. Boit, Berlin University of Technology, Berlin, Germany; P. Perdu, CNES - French Space Agency, Toulouse, France

Summary: The optical spatial resolution improvement by local FIB assisted silicon material removal has been investigated. A sample has been chosen to include many identical repetitive components with different spacing in order to be able to trace the resolution improvement. The samples of various remaining bulk silicon thicknesses were prepared and characterized in terms of image quality and spatial resolution. The trench depth (and resulting remaining bulk Si thickness) has been measured. The images have been acquired using a halogen lamp illumination and the reflected light detection using cooled Si-CCD detector. In order to investigate the image quality at different wavelengths a set of interference band-pass filters have been applied. Based on the images the resolution has been estimated.