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Deltascan, a Light Microscope Imaging System for Examining Birefringent Materials.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

J.G. Lewis
Affiliation:
Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, 0X1 3PU.
A.M. Glazer
Affiliation:
Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, 0X1 3PU.
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Extract

DELTASCAN is a new light microscopy imaging system developed and built in the Department of Physics, Oxford, UK. [1] It is able to separate out the contrast seen in a ‘cross-polars’ image into three components, | sin δ | (a function of the optical retardation), φ (the orientation of a section of the optical indicatrix) and Io (the transmittance). These three variables are plotted as separate coded colour images. With the present computer and apparatus the data is collected, processed and the images simultaneously drawn in approximately 40 seconds.

DELTASCAN has an optical setup [2] based around a polarising microscope (Figure 5). The intensity through this optical setup can be shown to have the form:

I = Io[1 + sin2(ωt−ϕ)sin δ] (1)

where ω = frequency of the analyser, φ = orientation of cross section of the indicatrix and, δ = relative retardation which is related to a samples birefringence by δ = 2πΔnL/λ.

Type
Optical Microanalysis
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 1997

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References

[1]Glazer, A.M., Lewis, J.G., & Kaminsky, W. (1996) An automatic optical imaging system for birefringent media. Proc. Roy. Soc. London.A, 452, 27512765.Google Scholar
[2]Wood, I.G. & Glazer, A.M. (1980): Ferroelastic phase transition in BiVO4. I Birefringence measurements using the Rotating Analyser method. J. Appl. Cryst, 13, 217223.Google Scholar