SLED: butterfly-inspired superior darkfield illumination

Here you can discuss different microscopic techniques and illumination methods, such as Brightfield, Darkfield, Phase Contrast, DIC, Oblique illumination, etc.
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Dubious
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Joined: Sun May 09, 2021 7:55 pm

SLED: butterfly-inspired superior darkfield illumination

#1 Post by Dubious » Mon Jun 21, 2021 1:03 am

Someone pointed me to this interesting article on pigment vs structural coloring found in the animal kingdom.

Blue Animals Are Different from All the Rest
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... ay/619243/

The last paragraph cites a paper in Nature Photonics on an improved method of dark-field imaging microscopy inspired by the nanoscale grooves in the wing scales of butterflies. The full text of the paper, which describes using a luminescent micropatterned photonic surface to provide darkfield illumination particularly useful at higher magnifications, can be found at:

Luminescent surfaces with tailored angular emission for compact dark-field imaging devices
https://bioinspiredoptics.mit.edu/wp-co ... missio.pdf

"Here, we propose to simplify and miniaturize dark-field microscopy instrumentation by integrating the dark-field light source into the sample substrate. . . We call this dark-field imaging technique,
which relies on the unique light-emission characteristics of the substrate, ‘substrate luminescence-enabled dark-field’ imaging (SLED)."

Interesting stuff.

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