We have developed a high-throughput laser marking system using a programmable multi-spot modulated line beam capable of >13x throughput enhancement over a single-spot system. While commercially available lasers have been rapidly growing in output energy and power, single-spot marking systems cannot take full advantage of higher laser outputs without causing damage to the material. This system provides high throughput, high resolution marking on a variety of surfaces including stainless steel and polymer. This high productivity system is enabled by a high-power MEMS spatial light modulator called the Planar Light Valve (PLVTM). The PLV is a 1088-pixel device in a linear configuration supporting up to 200 kHz modulation. The PLV supports pulse energies of 920 μJ with pulse widths down to 200 femtoseconds and CW power of 1 kW at wavelengths of 355-1070 nm. In this system the PLV is imaged onto the work surface to create roughly 100 segments which are individually addressed to select the laser fluence in each spot with grayscale control. The linear array is scanned across the media using precision X-Y stages. The resulting feature size is 20 μm yielding high resolution 1270 dpi images. Each spot on the work surface is made up of several PLV pixels, which allows precise edge placements. In this demonstration a 100 W laser is used for a 13x throughput enhancement over a single-spot system with 4x better resolution. This optical system can be adapted for many laser processing applications such as additive manufacturing, lithography, and micromachining.
Significance: Axially swept light sheet microscopy is used for deconvolution-free, high-resolution 3D imaging, but usually the axial scan mechanism reduces the top imaging speed. Phased arrays (PAs) for axial scanning enable both high resolution and high speed.
Aim: A high-speed PA with an update rate faster than the camera row read time is used to track the rolling shutter at camera-limited rates.
Approach: The point spread function is evaluated to ensure sub-micron isotropic resolution, and the technique is demonstrated on a live Drosophila embryo.
Results: Isotropic resolution is shown down to 720 ± 55 nm in all three spatial dimensions. With an update rate of 2.85 μs, the PA tracks the camera sensor rolling shutter at camera-limited rates. Features in the Drosophila embryo are resolved clearly compared with the equivalent static light sheet case. The random-access nature of the PA enables a camera sensor readout in the same direction for each frame to maintain even temporal sampling in image sequences with no speed loss.
Conclusions: Use of PAs is compatible with axially swept light sheet microscopy and offers significant improvements in speed.
We demonstrate improved optical sectioning in light sheet fluorescence microscopy using tunable structured illumination (SI) frequencies to optimize image quality in scattering specimens. The SI patterns are generated coherently using a one-dimensional spatial light modulator for maximum pattern contrast, and the pattern spatial frequency is adjustable up to half the incoherent cutoff frequency of our detection objective. At this frequency, we demonstrate background reductions of 2 orders of magnitude.
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