Silica Microspheres thumbnail
Silica Microspheres

Dark-field microscope images of silica microspheres (~250 μm diameter) fabricated on the tip of an optical fiber. The three images were obtained by scanning the focal-plane position across the sample. Only light that is deflected by the sphere forms is collected by the microscope, giving a gloomy look.

The images were captured with a Nikon Eclipse LV100ND Optical Microscope with a 20× objective, 30 ms of exposure and dark-field mode, at MackGraphe, the Graphene and Nanomaterials Research Center at Mackenzie Presbyterian University.

—Kamila Tieppo, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, Brazil