Continual improvements in optical microscopy are needed to keep up with the progress in nanotechnology and microbiology. Advancement in spatial resolution is key. Conventional optical microscopy is limited by a diffraction limit which is on the order of 200 nanometers (wavelength). This means that viruses, proteins, DNA molecules and many other samples are hard to observe with a regular (optical) microscope. The lens previously demonstrated with negative refractive index material, a thin planar superlens, does not provide magnification beyond the diffraction limit of conventional microscopes. Therefore, images smaller than the conventional diffraction limit will still be unavailable.