Divided-aperture confocal Brillouin microscopy for simultaneous high-precision topographic and mechanical mapping

Hanxu Wu, Weiqian Zhao, Yunhao Su, Lirong Qiu, Yun Wang, He Ni*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Confocal Brillouin microscopy (CBM) is a novel and powerful technique for providing non-contact and direct readout of the micro-mechanical properties of a material, and thus used in a broad range of applications, including biological tissue detection, cell imaging, and material characterization in manufacturing. However, conventional CBMs have not enabled high precision mechanical mapping owing to the limited depth of focus and are subject to system drift during long-term measurements. In this paper, a divided-aperture confocal Brillouin microscopy (DCBM) is proposed to improve the axial focusing capability, stability, and extinction ratio of CBM. We exploit high-sensitivity divided-aperture confocal technology to achieve an unprecedented 100-fold enhancement in the axial focusing sensitivity of the existing CBMs, reaching 5 nm, and to enhance system stability. In addition, the dark-field setup improves the extinction ratio by 20 dB. To the best of our knowledge, our method achieves the first in situ topographic imaging and mechanical mapping of the sample and provides a new approach for Brillouin scattering applications in material characterization.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)31821-31831
Number of pages11
JournalOptics Express
Volume28
Issue number21
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Oct 2020

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