Blu-rayTM micro structures resolved - in an ordinary light microscope! (III)
Once more - why are we making so much fuss about the Blu-ray microscopy? It is quite simple:
No matter what kind of leisure time activity or professional work you are performing
with your microscope - you should know about its performance and its physical limits.
CD, DVD and Blu-ray have a big advantage in common: they are standardized all over
the world. As a consequence everybody in possession of one of these can participate
in a universal microscope performance check. This is a big difference when
compared e.g. to diatom test specimens. As some among you will know anyway,
there is a certain variability among diatom test specimens. This variability can
be explained by different embedding media with different diffraction indices and
by tiny, but not neglegible differences in the sizes of the actual diatom individuals.
In contrast the industrial media can serve as true sub micrometer rulers.
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Last but not least each Blu-ray is a wonderful demonstration object
in order to illustrate the physico-chemical borderline of light microscopy.
For this sake please simply look once more at our light microscopic photomicrograph
of a Blu-ray (fig. 1, green color center area):
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Fig 1: Combined photomicrographs
of a CD, a DVD and a Blu-ray in uniform magnification.
Please note that the Blu-ray part of the image is slightly retouched with
a few dust particles removed. Cf. additional technical informations in our previous magazine issues
[ English keywords: Blu-ray disk, microscope, microscopy, diffraction limit ]
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When looking around in the internet you will read on and on that
the light microscopic resolution is diffraction limited. This has to be accepted, of course.
But, on the other hand, nobody can actually precisely say what this means in practice.
It sounds reasonable to state that the resolution limit should be approximately
half of the light wavelength of "average" blue light
thus defining the resolution limit as circa 200 nm.
When looking back into the original primary literature it becomes clear that
even Ernst Abbe, a mathematical genius, finally resorted to a non-numerical, verbal definition
of the light microscopic resolution limit [very free translation by us - sorry]:
"As it is by no means possible, even by immersion, to reach a
viewing angle above 180° (with respect to air) we have to accept the consequence
that the resolution limit with central illumination will never exceed the value
of a full wavelength, with extreme oblique illumination the value of
a half wavelength of blue light" [Abbe, 1873, S. 456]
For those among you who are able to read German, please consider to use the better,
original text by Ernst Abbe: "Da nun auch beim Immersionssystem der Oeffnungswinkel durch kein Mittel erheblich
über diejenige Grösse, die 180° in Luft entsprechen würde, hinausgeführt werden kann,
so folgt, dass […] die Unterscheidungsgrenze für centrale Beleuchtung doch niemals über
den Betrag der ganzen, und für äusserste schiefe Beleuchtung niemals über den der halben
Wellenlänge des blauen Lichts um ein Nennenswerthes hinausgehen wird."
Kurt Michel, not an intellectually light weight personality either, being the chief of the ZEISS
optical engineering at his time, also tended to a soft verbal definition, namely
[once more in free translation by us]:
"There is no exact borderline for microscopic resolution. Instead, the visibility of
detail resolution is continuously decreasing within a certain range which
we should call a 'critical range of the resolution'"[Michel 1950].
In German: "Es besteht keine scharfe Grenze für das Auflösungsvermögen.
Die Deutlichkeit der Auflösung nimmt vielmehr innerhalb eines gewissen Bereichs,
den wir den 'kritischen Bereich der Auflösung' nennen wollen, allmählich ab."
Gerhard Göke, a more modern author and writer of a prolific microscopy
textbook is supporting this line of argument as well,
by using "upper" and "lower" resolution pairs in his monograph [Göke 1988].
When looking at fig. 1, 2 and 3 in their relationship it becomes obvious that all three distances
marked in the schematic cross-section of fig. 3 can be more or less "seen" (in fig. 1).
As a consequence it does make sense to stick to a conservative microscopic resolution
limit of "circa 0.2 µm" but it doesn't make sense to fix it at a precise
numerical value of "200 nm". Instead it might be somewhere in the
range between ca. 130 and 190 mµ.
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Fig. 2: The well-defined
fine structure of three computer storage media: CD, DVD and Blu-Ray. From this image
it becomes clear that all three of them can serve as high precision "nano rulers"
and light microscopic test specimens at the limit of light microscopic resolution.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Cmglee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link)
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Fig. 3: Schematic Blu-ray cross section on the basis of fig. 2.
Now, what do you think - which of the three distances marked in red can can be actually perceived and resolved in fig. 1?
We think, all three of them, more or less. This would imply a microscopice resolution limit well beyond (below) 200 nm.
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Now we might argue in the direction of either of those three lines. But still
there can be no doubt that the Blu-ray fine structure is well within the reach
of the classic light microscope and that all publications stating the opposite
are (slightly but definitely) wrong.
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Literature
It might help to have a closer look at the original German literature:
Ernst Abbe: Beiträge zur Theorie des Mikroskops und der mikroskopischen Wahrnehmung.
In: Archiv für mikroskopische Anatomie. Volume 9, Nr. 1, December 1873, p. 413–468
[quoted on the basis of the German Wikipedia chapter "Auflösung (Mikroskopie)"]
Kurt Michel: Die Grundlagen der Theorie des Mikroskops. p. 211. Stuttgart 1950.
Gerhard Göke: Moderne Methoden der Lichtmikroskopie. p 53. Stuttgart 1988.
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