  Harnessing electron spin is crucial in developing energy-saving and
high-speed devices for the next generation. In this scheme, visualizing
spin-polarized electronic states aids in designing and developing new materials
and devices. Spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy provides information on
the spin-polarized electronic states. To investigate the spin-polarized
electronic states in microscopic materials and devices, spin-resolved
photoemission spectroscopy requires spatial resolution in a sub-micrometer
scale. Here we show the imaging-type spin-resolved photoemission microscopy
(iSPEM) with an ultraviolet laser developed at the National Institutes for
Materials Science (NIMS). Our iSPEM achieves a spatial resolution of 420 nm,
drastically improving by more than an order of magnitude compared to
conventional spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy instruments. Besides, the
multi-channel spin detector significantly reduces the data acquisition time by
four orders of magnitude compared to the conventional instruments. The iSPEM
machine elucidates the spin-polarized electronic states of sub-micrometer scale
materials, polycrystals, device structure samples, and so on, which have yet to
be the target of conventional spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
