New Project: Infrared Polarimetric Microscope with Synchrotron Light

The new instrumental project is about the development of a non-conventional Infrared Imaging Polarimeter that will be installed at Synchrotron SOLEIL and will we operative at the end of 2021. The optical design of the new microscope will be optimize to fully exploit the brightness of the synchrotron source or that of a tunable infrared laser.

The microscope sensitive to polarization and capable of measuring the full polarimetric properties of the sample including linear / circular dichroism, phase shift and depolarization.

Possible applications include:

• Determination of the the orientation of chemical bonds or molecules deposited on substrates,
• Measurement of the crystallinity degree of polymers,
• Determination of the orientation and distribution of crystalline phases in solids among others.

Multimodal Polarimetric Microscope with Visible Light

A unique and innovative multimodal polarimetric microscope, which works with visible light, has been recently developed and it is installed in the locals of the Laboratory LPICM.

The polarimetric microscope consists of a versatile microscope in transmission coupled to a full Mueller polarimeter. The system allows acquiring images in real and Fourier planes, which are ideal to study the surface of the samples, and the distribution of light scattered by them.

In the last two years the multimodal polarimetric microscope has been used to study the optical response of multiple types of simples such as scattering media, diffusing microparticles or plasmonic materials.

The system is also interesting to characterize the optical response of thin histologic cuts of tissues. The development of the multimodal polarimetric microscope has been the object of the PhD thesis of Dr. Thomas Sang Hyuk Yoo.

References

Ref1. SH. Yoo, R. Ossikovski, E. Garcia-Caurel, “Experimental study of thickness dependence of polarization and depolarization properties of anisotropic turbid media using Mueller matrix polarimetry and differential decomposition”, Applied Surface Science 421, 870-877 (2017).

Ref2. TSH. Yoo, A. Fernández, F. Moreno, JM. Saiz, R. Ossikovski, E. Garcia-Caurel, “Multimodal imaging Mueller polarimetric microscope to study polarimetric properties of spheroidal microparticles”, Optical Micro-and Nanometrology VII 10678, 106780J (2018)

Ref3. C. Turbil, TS. HyukYoo, I. Simonsen, J. Teisseire, I. Gozhyk, E. Garcia-Caurel, “Impact of light diffraction on haze and gloss in transmission through supported micro-pillar arrays”, arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.09972

Ref4. TSH. Yoo, J. Berthelot, G. Guida, D. Demaille, E. Garcia-Caurel, N. Bonod, B. Gallas, “Circularly Polarized Images with Contrast Reversal Using Pseudochiral Metasurfaces”, ACS Photonics, 5, 4068 (2018)