Search results for "Optical microscope"
showing 10 items of 157 documents
Lamination of swampy-rivulets Rivularia haematites stromatolites in a temperate climate
2001
Abstract Swampy-rivulets Rivularia haematites (D.C.) Agardh stromatolites were collected from the same site on the Plateau de Langres (Chaugey, France) over a seven year period. Specimens were studied in thin sections, in culture media under varying conditions of temperature and illumination, and by scanning electron microscope (SEM) in order to investigate the processes of calcification and lamination. New SEM observations confirm the polycrystalline structure of the ‘lamellae’ reported by the authors and show that the crystals composing these lamellae are elongate and aligned in the same direction as the filaments linked by them. The lamellae were also isolated in transverse sections unde…
Microstructural modifications resulting from the dehydration of gypsum
2001
Various faces of dehydrated gypsum-cleaved blocks and single crystals have been investigated using optical microscopy, SEM, and TEM. The orientation of the cracks with respect to the initial gypsum structure and the Miller indices of all possible crack planes have been determined. These crack planes have been found to be few and to correspond to planes of high atomic density in the initial and final structures, therefore characterised by a low surface tension. These observations allow us to propose cracking criteria based on general concepts of crystal growth. The cracks' dimensions measured on different faces of the pseudomorph are distributed over several orders of magnitude and seems to …
Mapping electron-beam-injected trapped charge with scattering scanning near-field optical microscopy.
2016
Scattering scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) has been demonstrated as a valuable tool for mapping the optical and optoelectronic properties of materials with nanoscale resolution. Here we report experimental evidence that trapped electric charges injected by an electron beam at the surface of dielectric samples affect the sample-dipole interaction, which has direct impact on the s-SNOM image content. Nanoscale mapping of the surface trapped charge holds significant potential for the precise tailoring of the electrostatic properties of dielectric and semiconductive samples, such as hydroxyapatite, which has particular importance with respect to biomedical applications. The meth…
Assessment of Shear-Induced Structures by Real Space and Fourier Microscopy
2007
We report preliminary measurements of the shear-induced sliding layer structure in an aqueous suspension of highly charged polystyrene spheres. Particle interaction was controlled by advanced conditioning procedures to result in fluid or body-centred cubic equilibrium structures. Shear was applied in an optical plate-plate shear cell of variable slit width. Fourier microscopy yielded complementary information to real space analysis. The accessible range of scattering vectors was (3.5 ≤ k ≤ 7.2) μm−1 We checked the experimental performance by recording the form factor of a non-interacting suspension and structure factors of less dilute suspensions in dependence on electrolyte concentration c…
Advanced fragmentation stage of oxide coating on polymer substrate under biaxial tension
2005
Crack patterns of 100-nm-thick silicon oxide coating on polypropylene film subjected to equibiaxial stress loading are studied experimentally. The loading is achieved by means of a bulging cell mounted under an optical microscope with stepwise pressurization of film specimens. The evolution of the coating fragment area distribution at relatively high strains is modeled using Weibull statistics to describe the coating strength. The fragment area distribution at an advanced fragmentation stage is shown to scale with the average fragment area, the latter being a power function of the applied biaxial strain.
New Analytical Tools for Evaluation of Spherical Aberration in Optical Microscopy
2010
The required tightly focused spots in three-dimensional (3D) scanning optical techniques are usually achieved by high-NA immersion lenses. The refractive index mismatch between the sample and the immersion medium introduces an important amount of spherical aberration when imaging deep inside the specimen, spreading out the focusing response. Since this aberration depends on the focalization depth, it is not possible to simultaneously achieve a global compensation for the whole scanned sample. In this way, the design of pupil elements that increase the tolerance to this aberration is of great interest. We present a new formalism for the evaluation and the design of filters that decrease the …
Optical near-field microscopy of light focusing through a photonic crystal flat lens
2008
We report here the direct observation by using a scanning near-field microscopy technique of the light focusing through a photonic crystal flat lens designed and fabricated to operate at optical frequencies. The lens is fabricated using a III-V semiconductor slab, and we directly visualize the propagation of the electromagnetic waves by using a scanning near-field optical microscope. We directly evidence spatially, as well as spectrally, the focusing operating regime of the lens. At last, in light of the experimental scanning near-field optical microscope pictures, we discuss the lens ability to focus light at a subwavelength scale.
Optical Symmetry of Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Cells
1990
We observe an exact optical symmetry in Surface Stabilized Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal (SSFLC) cells in polarized transmission optical microscopy and spectroscopy. A theoretical argument based on the intrinsic time reversibility of Maxwell's equations and energy conservation is developed to explain this symmetry. The results support the model of Clark and Rieker for zig-zag wall structure and illustrate the necessity of including the orientational binding of the director at the chevron interface.
Near‐field optical addressing of single molecules in coplanar geometry: a theoretical study
2001
Photonic transfer through elongated optical structures of submicrometre section microfabricated at the surface of dielectric or semiconductor samples can be enhanced by an appropriate structuring of the local refraction index. We show from computerized simulations that both the light localization and the spectroscopic properties of such structures can be used to selectively excite, in coplanar geometry, individuals molecules located in the near-field.
Synthetic aperture microscopy using off-axis illumination and polarization coding
2007
A new method to improve the resolution of optical imaging systems beyond the classical Rayleigh resolution limit is presented. The technique relies on synthetic aperture generation in three stages. The first one (encoding stage) uses an illumination procedure that combines both on-axis and off-axis illumination beams with different polarization states onto the object. After the imaging system, a second stage (decoding stage) allows the recovering of the encoded spatial-frequency object information by means of an interferometric configuration based on the polarization coding carried out in the previous stage. Finally, a third stage (digital post-processing stage) is used to generate a synthe…