  The use of individual multimode optical fibers in endoscopy applications has
the potential to provide highly miniaturized and noninvasive probes for
microscopy and optical micromanipulation. A few different strategies have been
proposed recently, but they all suffer from intrinsically low resolution
related to the low numerical aperture of multimode fibers. Here, we show that
two-photon polymerization allows for direct fabrication of micro-optics
components on the fiber end, resulting in an increase of the numerical aperture
to a value that is close to 1. Coupling light into the fiber through a spatial
light modulator, we were able to optically scan a submicrometer spot (300 nm
FWHM) over an extended region, facing the opposite fiber end. Fluorescence
imaging with improved resolution is also demonstrated.
