Materials Science

You are a materials scientist working in semiconductors, metrology, or advanced materials, and you want to identify a raw material, or understand the organisation of different chemical compounds in your material without destroying them or modifying their formats, Lightcore Technologies BondXplorer microscope provides a versatile and tunable platform to image chemical compounds through their vibrational signatures [350cm-1, 3800cm-1].

BondXplorer: SRS imaging of Calcite cristals on adhesive tape.  λ (OPO) =  929.45nm, Raman vibrational bands at 1000cm-1 and 1085cm-1 are acquired simultaneously. (a) SRS image at 1000cm-1 (off resonance: adhesive tape), (b) SRS image at 1085cm-1 (On resonance: calcite) (c) Phase contrast image of the same sample. (d) Composite mosaic image (magenta – adhesive tape; cyan – calcite). Scale bar = 100µm.

BondXplorer: Imaging of a monolayer sample MOS2. (a) Large mosaic image: One can appreciate the accuracy of the triangular ‘cristals’ (size = a few microns) while the accuracy in z is shown on (b). (b) Montage of a  z stack (one image per 0.25µm) : one can see the signal ‘drifting from the left bottom side to the middle to the top right hand side corner with depth. This is due to the sample monolayer being not entirely flat. Scale bar=50µm.

BondXplorer: Imaging of a monolayer sample of WS2 ‘flakes’ (thickness= a few nanometers) with (a) a phase contrast microscope; (b)(c) One can appreciate the structure of the WS2 triangular flakes. Scale bar= 50µm. 

BondXplorer: SRS images of solid bulk of GaN. By changing the wavelength of the  OPO (Delta Emerald laser source from APE), the ON (signal) and OFF (background) images are obtained simultaneously. (a) and (b): Off-On for λ(OPO) =  977.3nm  (474cm-1/560cm-1); (c) and (d) On-Off for λ (OPO) = 969.2nm (560cm-1/645cm-1). Scale bar=100µm.