Towards a scanning laser confocal microscope using the self-mixing effect

Abstract

This paper investigates the resolution and contrast in a near-infrared VCSEL based interferometric confocal microscope and proposes an architecture that can be readily applied in a range of bipolar and unipolar semiconductor lasers. Homodyning nature of the interferometric imaging technique helps overcome the problems related to weak scattered field while imaging nano-particles and low index-contrast objects.