Measurement of inhomogeneous absorptive organic media with polarization interferometric confocal microscope.

Polarization interferometric confocal microscope has been developed for high-precision measurement, especially for inhomogeneous organic media doped with nonlinear chromophores. The microscope has a novel contrast-enhancing technique: suppressing the background electric field with polarization interferometer. With this technique, the microscope has allowed optical anisotropy detection in a submicron area (400 nm × 400 nm), even with a low-cost and low-power continuous-wave (CW) laser light source. In particular, the microscope clearly distinguishes between isotropic and anisotropic regions. According to polarization interferometric ellipsometry, the microscope produces inspection images showing planer distribution of the optical parameter directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]