What substance is my particular polarizer made of?

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microcosmos
Posts: 252
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:05 am
Location: Singapore

What substance is my particular polarizer made of?

#1 Post by microcosmos » Tue Jun 29, 2021 10:40 am

The polarizer in my polarizing microscope has a slight greyish-blue tint (as I believe is the case for many polarizing microscopes). Does anyone know what material it's made of? I know it's not important for practical purposes but I'm curious.

I read that polarizers can be made of materials such as tourmaline, herapathite or silver particles, but how do you identify the material of a particular polarizer? Is it possible just by looking at the filter?

Does the greyish-blue tint affect the interference colours at all, since it presumably alters the spectrum of the light that passes through it? Would a completely colourless polarizer be better, theoretically? Practically I guess it doesn't matter.

microcosmos
Posts: 252
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:05 am
Location: Singapore

Re: What substance is my particular polarizer made of?

#2 Post by microcosmos » Tue Aug 17, 2021 6:27 am

I just found the answer on an Olympus webpage - it's probably made of polyvinyl alcohol stretched to align the polymer chains and then impregnated with iodine.

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