Large zooming range adaptive microscope employing tunable objective and eyepiece

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 14644
• Main Authors: Kuang, Feng-Lin, Yuan, Rong-Ying, Wang, Qiong-Hua, Li, Lei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group 04.09.2020; Nature Publishing Group UK
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Climate change; Community composition; Coral reefs; Ecosystems; Nutrient availability; Nutrient enrichment; Sediments; Species composition; Red Sea
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-71507-8

Abstract The conventional microscope has discrete magnification and slow response time in zoom process, which is difficult to capture the dynamic activity of the live specimen. We demonstrate an adaptive microscope employing a tunable objective and a tunable eyepiece with large zooming range. The tunable objective consists of three glass lenses and four electrowetting liquid lenses. The tunable eyepiece consists of an achromatic eyepiece and an electrowetting liquid lens. The focal point between the objective and the eyepiece is designed to be tunable, which are controlled by voltages. Thus, the tuning range is relatively large. We fabricate the adaptive microscope and observe the specimen. In the experiment, the magnification of the microscope changes continuously from ~ 59.1 × to ~ 159.2 × , and the largest numerical aperture is ~ 0.212. The tunable eyepiece can release the back focal length of the tunable objective, which increases the zoom range of the microscope. No mechanical movement is required and the aberrations can be corrected over a wide wavelength range. Thus, the proposed adaptive microscope has a potential application in biological research and clinical medical examination.