Design of an Adaptive Scanning Optical Microscope for Simultaneous Large Field of View and High Resolution

In microsystems applications from micro-assembly to biological observation and manipulation, the optical microscope remains one of the most important tools. However, it suffers from the well known trade-off between resolution and field of view. Traditional solutions involve moving the sample under the microscope using a moving stage or moving the microscope itself, and switching between low and high magnification objective lenses. In this paper, we present a new optical microscope design that uses a 2-dimensional high speed, high precision steering mirror system to scan the sample. By stitching the images together as a mosaic, we have the potential to achieve both high resolution and large field of view. Working in coordination with a deformable mirror, this arrangement offers certain advantages over the current state of the art in demanding spatial-temporal observations. We describe the theory of operation, our design methodology, and present a preliminary simulated design. A reduced functionality experimental prototype has been constructed to demonstrate the basic efficacy of the concept and we demonstrate with both biological and micro-assembly examples.