Total internal reflection (TIR) is useful for interrogating physical and chemical processes that occur at the interface between two transparent media. Yet prism-coupled TIR imaging microscopes suffer from limited sensing areas due to the fact that the interface (the object plane) is not perpendicular to the optical axis of the microscope. In this paper, we show that an electrically tunable lens can be used to rapidly and reproducibly correct the focal length of an oblique-incidence scanning microscope (OI-RD) in a prism-coupled TIR geometry. We demonstrate the performance of such a correction by acquiring an image of a protein microarray over a scan area of 4 cm(2) with an effective resolution of less than 20 microns. The electronic focal length tuning eliminates the mechanical movement of the illumination lens in the scanning microscope and in turn the noise and background drift associated with the motion.
[1]Fudan Univ, Minist Educ, Shanghai Engn Res Ctr Ultraprecis Opt Mfg, Key Lab Micro & Nano Photon Struct,Dept Opt Sci &, Shanghai 200433, Peoples R China;
[2]Univ Calif Davis, Dept Phys, Davis, CA 95616 USA;
[3]Wuxi Inst Technol, Dept Fundamental Courses, Wuxi 214121, Peoples R China;
[4]Fudan Univ, Inst Biomed Sci, Shanghai 200032, Peoples R China
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