Optical microscopy is an important measurement tool in many industries. This importance is primarily due to the ease-of-use and nondestructive characteristics of optical microscopes. Unfortunately, the far-field optics of conventional microscopes limit their resolution to approximately 200 nm. An imaging technique called near-field microscopy uses a subwavelength aperture to circumvent this limit to obtain images with enhanced resolution without many of the destructive consequences of other techniques. Visible microscopes based on this technique have produced images that demonstrate 10–15 nm resolution. This article describes the extension of these techniques to the infrared regime. A description of an infrared microscope capable of imaging the thermal emissions from micron scale conductors using optical techniques has been given. The microscope has been designed to operate in both the collection mode using an external infrared radiation source and in the self-illumination mode using thermally activated objects. Several infrared images of 2-&mgr;m-wide conductors have been provided to demonstrate the resolution capabilities of the microscope. These images clearly show the presence of the conductors and represent a significant increase in resolution over conventional infrared imaging devices. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.