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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/L95120/01
Title: CONFOCAL POLARISED LIGHT MICROSCOPY AND CONOSCOPY
Principal Investigator: Wilson, Professor T
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Engineering Science
Organisation: University of Oxford
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 05 January 1998 Ends: 04 June 2001 Value (£): 176,272
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Instrumentation Eng. & Dev.
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
We propose to take a systematic approach to extend the imaging capabilities of conventional and confocal microscopes through a thorough experimental and theoretical investigation of the polarisation state of the image field. Our work will permit image contrast and resolution in polarised light microscopes to be better understood and a number of new instruments developed. Although our work will be applicable in many areas of research we shall concentrate on technologically important materials such as magneto-optic materials and liquid crystals. We propose to develop a number of novel polarisation sensitive microscopes using both single and two moded birefringent optical fibres. The latter implementation will permit differential confocal polarisation contrast imaging. Another system will use a Zeeman laser which will also permit the system to be configured as a high resolution microellipsometer. A number of high resolution surface profilometers already exist. These techniques essentially depend on the converting of a phase measurement into height. In order to obtain ultra-high resolution it is necessary to remove any phase change due to the material properties - - Fresnel amplitude reflection coefficients. We propose to use interferometric conoscopic and microellipsometric techniques to measure this phase change and hence develop a highly sensitive surface profilometer.
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Organisation Website: http://www.ox.ac.uk