The fabrication and characterization of three near-field optical array types is presented. In all cases, a coherent fiber-optic bundle was chemically etched to produce an array of nanometer-sized, optical fiber tips. The270 &mgr;mdiameter bundle comprised∼6000tapered optical fibers and the smallest, etched optical fiber tips had an∼50 nmradius of curvature. This array could be metal coated, and a metal-coated array could be polished to yield an array of nanometer-sized apertures. These variable nanoarchitectures should be amenable to a large number of near-field scanning optical microscopies.©1997 American Institute of Physics.