JPH054122U - Transmission optical microscope - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] [Purpose] To provide a transmission optical microscope that is low in cost, does not require complicated optical axis adjustment of optical elements, can be used outdoors, and has an illumination device that can evenly and uniformly illuminate a sample. It is to be. [Structure] This microscope consists of an objective lens (6) and a sample (1
5) stage (7), a flat fluorescent lamp unit (9) having a flat fluorescent lamp having a flat fluorescent layer, and an oscillating circuit (17) for exciting the fluorescent layer to generate glow discharge for emitting light. And its DC power supply 12. The sample is bright-field illuminated so that the flat fluorescent layer is located outside the depth of focus of the objective lens at the time of focusing.

Description

[Detailed description of the device]

[0001]

[Industrial applications]

 The present invention relates to a transmission optical microscope for illuminating a sample by a bright field illumination method and observing transmitted light transmitted through the sample.

[0002]

[Prior Art]

 Conventionally, most illumination devices for optical microscopes use a halogen lamp of about 20 W to 100 W as a light source and perform uniform illumination by the Koehler illumination method. Such a device is composed of a halogen lamp as a light source, a power supply for lighting, and an optical system consisting of a collector lens, a diffusion plate, a field stop, an aperture stop, and a condenser lens. Is converted into parallel light by the action of an optical system and irradiated on the sample surface. According to such Koehler illumination method, there is no unevenness in illumination and the thermal focus is off the sample, so there is no risk of damaging the sample even if it is illuminated for a long time.

[0003]

[Problems to be solved by the device]

 However, the illumination device by such Koehler illumination method is very complicated and expensive because it uses various optical elements and mechanical elements. In addition, since the optical axes of various optical elements must be adjusted, manufacturing is time-consuming and manufacturing cost is high.

Further, since a power source such as a halogen lamp which consumes power of about 20 W to 100 W is required, the microscope can be used only in a place near a commercial power source, and the outdoor microscope is assumed to be used. When observing, it is necessary to transport equipment such as a dedicated generator.

An object of the present invention is to provide a transmission optical microscope that is low in cost, does not require complicated optical axis adjustment of optical elements, can be used outdoors, and has an illumination device that can evenly and uniformly illuminate a sample. Is to provide.

[0006]

[Means for Solving the Problems]

 A transmission optical microscope for illuminating a sample by a bright field illumination method and observing transmitted light transmitted through the sample according to the present invention includes an objective lens, a means for supporting the sample, a flat fluorescent lamp having a flat fluorescent layer, A means for generating a glow discharge that excites the fluorescent layer to emit light, and the flat fluorescent layer is positioned outside the depth of focus of the objective lens at the time of focusing to illuminate the sample under brightfield illumination. And a flat fluorescent lamp unit that operates.

[0007]

[Action]

 According to the present invention, since the flat fluorescent lamp unit using the parallel glow discharge as the excitation source is installed as the bright field illumination source, unlike the lamp having the coil-shaped light emitting body, the depth and surface distribution of the light emitting source are different. Therefore, the sample can be uniformly illuminated without unevenness. Moreover, unlike a halogen lamp or a tungsten lamp, which does not generate high heat, there is no possibility of damaging the sample by heat.

Further, since the sample is bright-field-illuminated directly from the light-emitting source, unlike the Koehler illumination method, various optical elements such as a collector lens, a field stop, and an aperture stop are not required, so that the cost is relatively low. Moreover, the complicated process of adjusting the optical axes of these various optical elements is not required. Furthermore, since parallel glow discharge is used and power consumption can be reduced, it is possible to drive the flat fluorescent lamp unit with a battery, and it is necessary to bring a generator etc. when carrying the microscope outdoors. There is no.

Furthermore, since this flat fluorescent lamp is installed below the depth of focus of the objective lens at the time of focusing, the unevenness of the fluorescent substance applied to the flat fluorescent lamp does not reach the eyes. It does not interfere with sample observation. In the conventional Koehler illuminator, such a problem could not occur because it was necessary to prevent the heating of the sample by keeping the halogen lamp, etc., considerably away from the sample.

[0010]

【Example】

 FIG. 1 is a side view schematically showing a transmission optical microscope according to an embodiment of the present invention. A flat fluorescent lamp pedestal 10 is supported on the stage receiver 8 so as to be vertically movable by a known mechanism. A mounting table 13 is provided on the receiving table 10, and a flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 described later is mounted on the mounting table 13. A handle 11 is rotatably provided on the stage receiver 8. By rotating the handle 11, the pedestal 10 is vertically moved with respect to the stage receiver 8 by a known mechanism such as a pinion-rack mechanism. As the pedestal 10 moves, the mounting table 13 and the flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 also move up and down. A lighting power supply, that is, a low-voltage DC power supply 12 such as 5 V, provided on or in the mirror body 3, is electrically connected to the flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 via the oscillation circuit 17 and the lead wire. It is connected to the. Although not shown, the power source 12 may be a battery box type in which a battery is detachably mounted. Alternatively, as shown in FIG. 9, it may be a type through an A / D converter 20 which is connected to a commercial AC power source by a plug and converts current from this to DC.

An XY stage 7 is arranged above the flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 with a slight distance from the flat fluorescent lamp unit 9. The stage 7 is supported by the stage receiver 8 so as to be movable in the XY directions, that is, the horizontal directions. A sample, that is, the sample 15, is placed on the stage 7. This stage 7 is made of a transparent material at least where the sample is placed, so that the light emitted from the flat fluorescent lamp 19 can bright-field illuminate the sample 15 placed on the XY stage 7. Is becoming Instead of being made of a transparent body, the stage 7 may be provided with a hole at a place where the sample is placed, and the sample 15 may be illuminated through the hole.

The stage receiver 8 is supported by the mirror body 3 so as to be movable in the vertical direction, that is, the Z direction by the rotation of the Z handle 4. A revolver 5 is rotatably supported on the top of the mirror body 3. A plurality of objective lenses 6 having different magnifications are supported on the revolver 5 so as to be sequentially movable above the sample 15 by the rotation of the revolver. As a result, the illumination light incident on the sample 15 passes through the sample and enters the objective lens 6 located above the sample. The objective lens 6 constitutes an imaging optical system together with the observation lens barrel 2 and the eyepiece lens 1 attached to the upper part of the mirror body 3. Thus, the observer can observe the magnified image of the sample 15 through the eyepiece lens 1. Next, the flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 will be described with reference to FIGS. 2 to 5.

As described above, the flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 is used as a bright field illumination device for a microscope. This unit 9 comprises a flat fluorescent lamp 19 and an inverter circuit 18. The flat fluorescent lamp 19 uses a parallel glow discharge between a pair of electrodes facing each other as a light emitting source. For example, a flat backlight for liquid crystal (BLU-1A: trade name) manufactured by Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. Can be used.

A glass container is formed by the top glass panel 9c, the bottom glass panel 9g, and the side glass panel 9f. These glass panels are made of transparent glass. A cathode 9a and a cathode 9b are installed at opposite ends of the internal space of the glass container. The cathode 9a and the anode 9b are formed of an elongated metal plate having a U-shaped cross section, and are arranged in parallel so that their opening sides face each other. On the inner wall surface of the upper glass panel 9c and the inner wall surface of the lower glass panel 9g, a fluorescent film 9d is formed over almost the entire surface by a printing method or the like. Each fluorescent film is formed by arranging a plurality of square fluorescent film pieces. A lead portion 16 connected to a lead wire connected to the power source 12 (FIG. 1) is connected and fixed to each of the parallel electrodes 9a and 9b. The inner space of the glass container is filled with a low-pressure excited gas by supplying an exciting gas such as argon or neon after exhausting air through an exhaust pipe 9e that is introduced into the glass container. In such a flat fluorescent lamp, a direct current voltage is applied between a pair of parallel electrodes 9a and 9b facing each other to generate a normal glow discharge, which is used as a phosphor excitation source.

When the glow discharge is generated between the cathode 9a and the anode 9b, first, the parallel glow discharge is uniformly generated between the cathode 9a and the anode 9b. However, if left unattended in this state, the current immediately becomes large and the current runs linearly in a very limited area. To avoid this, when power is supplied from the lighting power source, the switch is repeatedly turned on and off at a very high speed so that only parallel glow discharge occurs repeatedly.

An example of such a lighting power supply is shown in the block diagram of FIG. Power of + V and GND is supplied to the oscillator 17a from the power supply source 12 including an AC adapter or a battery, and the oscillator 17a oscillates a rectangular wave as shown in FIG. 6, for example. In this example, an on time of 53.6 μs and an off time of 10 μs are repeated alternately. This waveform is amplified by the buffer 17b and output as a SYNC signal. The oscillator 17a and the buffer 17b form an oscillator circuit 17. The + V, GND, and SYNC signals are input to the inverter circuit 18, and the output of the inverter circuit 18 causes parallel glow discharge between the pair of parallel electrodes 9a and 9b to turn on the flat fluorescent lamp 19.

According to the present embodiment, since the flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 which uses the parallel glow discharge between the pair of electrodes 9a and 9b facing each other as the excitation source is installed as the bright field illumination source, it is used as the light emitting source. Since there is no depth or surface distribution, the sample 15 can be uniformly illuminated. Further, unlike a halogen lamp or a tungsten lamp, which does not generate high heat, there is no possibility that the sample 15 is damaged by heat.

Furthermore, since various optical elements are not required, the cost is low. Moreover, the complicated process of adjusting the optical axes of these various optical elements is not required. Further, since parallel glow discharge is used and power consumption can be reduced, it is also possible to drive the flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 with a battery.

As described above, the fluorescent agent is applied to the inner wall surfaces of the glass panels 9c and 9g. According to the observation of the inventor of the present invention, when the surface coated with the fluorescent agent enters the depth of focus of the objective lens 6, coating unevenness can be seen. For example, when the magnification of the objective lens is 1 ×, the depth of focus is about 1.5 mm, and when the magnification is 2 ×, it is about 0.4 mm. When the fluorescent agent coating surface approaches the sample 15 within this distance, the image of the sample 15 and the image of the fluorescent agent coating surface of the flat fluorescent lamp 19 are overlapped with each other, resulting in uneven coating of the fluorescent agent. It will get in the way of observation. Further, the coating unevenness may be mistaken for the unevenness of the sample 15.

Therefore, the surface of the flat fluorescent lamp 19 is positioned below the depth of focus of the objective lens 6 even when the flat fluorescent lamp pedestal 10 is most raised by rotating the handle 11. Adjust to. In this way, the image of the surface coated with the fluorescent agent does not overlap with the image of the sample 15. The flat fluorescent lamp 19 is preferably installed substantially perpendicular to the optical axis 14 of the objective lens 6 in order to illuminate the sample 15 evenly and uniformly. Further specific experimental results will be described.

The voltage + V is set to +5 V, and a rectangular wave as shown in FIG. 6 is oscillated to cause the flat fluorescent lamp 19 shown in FIG. 2 or FIG. 4 to emit light. In this case, the flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 consumes about 110 mA, and even if the oscillator 17a and the buffer 12c are included, the power consumption is less than 1 W. Therefore, a dry battery or the like can be used as the power supply source 12.

The size of the light emitting surface of the flat fluorescent lamp 19 was 21.2 × 16.3 mm. With such a size, the light emitting area is sufficient for the purpose of illuminating the normal visual field of the objective lens 6.

In addition, the light emitting surface of the flat fluorescent lamp 19 is divided into three columns vertically and horizontally in a matrix pattern, and the luminance of each part is measured, and the measurement result is displayed as a relative value in FIG. However, the numerical value of each part shows the percentage when the brightness of the central part is 100%.

As can be seen from these results, a luminance of at least 70% can be secured, and there is practically no problem as a light source for bright field illumination. Further, since the color temperature of this light emitting surface is about 7,000 K, it is suitable for bright field observation.

The above flat fluorescent lamp unit 9 was installed at the position shown in FIG. 1, the magnification of the objective lens 6 was changed variously, and the illuminance at the eyepiece lens 1 was measured in each case. The measurement results are shown in Table 1. Table 1 Magnification of the objective lens 6 Illuminance (LUX) of eyepiece 1 × 2.4 2 × 2.5 4 × 1.7 10 × 1.8 20 × 0.9 40 × 0.5

Generally, if an illuminance of about 1 LUX is obtained, it is easy to observe a magnified image of the sample. When the magnification of the objective lens 6 is 40 times, it is slightly dark, but at other magnifications, the brightness is easy to see.

In the conventional Koehler illumination method, the illuminance at the eyepiece lens is inversely proportional to the square of the magnification of the objective lens. Therefore, for example, the illuminance is 1000 times or more different when the magnification of the objective lens is 1 and 40 times. Therefore, if the object lens is replaced, the halogen lamp voltage, brightness diaphragm, ND filter, etc. must all be readjusted.

On the other hand, in this embodiment, even if the magnification of the objective lens changes considerably, the illuminance at the eyepiece 1 changes only on the order of several times. This is only a change that can be adjusted naturally by the human eye. Therefore, even if the objective lens is exchanged, it is not necessary to newly adjust the light intensity. In addition, if a fluorescent substance of almost white color is applied, the object to be observed appears to float up in a white background, making it easy to find its position.

Further, in the present embodiment, even after the above-mentioned illuminance measurement is performed, even if the flat fluorescent lamp 19 is further lowered by about 2 mm, the illuminance at the eyepiece part 1 may be reduced by only about 0.2 LUX. found. Therefore, as the XY stage 7, as described above, a transparent glass XY stage having no holes can be used instead of the opaque plate having the holes for illumination. In this case, since there is no possibility that fragments of the slide glass will fall under the XY stage, cleaning is easy.

The embodiment of the present invention has been described above mainly for a transmission microscope for living organisms, but it goes without saying that it can be used as a transmission transparent for a stereoscopic microscope. In the case of a stereoscopic microscope, the depth of focus of the objective lens is several mm, so it is even more important to position the flat fluorescent lamp 19 below the depth of focus during observation.

The case where a flat fluorescent lamp is used as the illumination device of the transmission optical microscope according to the present invention has been described, but other flat light source lamps such as an electroluminescence lamp may be used. In the modified microscope of the present invention shown in FIG. 8, the oscillation circuit 17 is provided in the mounting table 13 and electrically connected to the power supply 13 in the mirror body 3.

[0032]

[Effect of the device]

 According to the present invention, since a flat fluorescent lamp having a parallel glow discharge between a pair of electrodes facing each other as a light emitting source is installed as a bright field illumination source, a lamp having a light emitting body wound in a coil shape is used. In contrast, the luminescence source has no depth and no surface distribution, so that the sample can be uniformly illuminated. Moreover, unlike a halogen lamp or a tungsten lamp, it does not generate high heat, so there is no risk of heat damage to the sample.

Further, since the sample is bright-field-illuminated directly from the light-emitting source, unlike the Koehler illumination method, various optical elements such as a collector lens, a field stop, and a brightness stop are not required, so that the cost is low. Moreover, the complicated process of adjusting the optical axes of these various optical elements is not required. Furthermore, since the parallel glow is used and the power consumption can be reduced, it is also possible to drive the flat fluorescent lamp with a battery, and it is necessary to bring a generator etc. to the printer for carrying the microscope outdoors. Absent.

Furthermore, since this flat fluorescent lamp is installed below the depth of focus of the objective lens at the time of focusing, the unevenness of the fluorescent substance or the like applied to the flat fluorescent lamp gets into the eyes. Therefore, it does not interfere with the sample observation.

When the above flat fluorescent lamp is used for bright field illumination, even if the magnification of the objective lens changes considerably, the illuminance at the eyepiece changes only relatively slowly. Therefore, even if the objective lens is exchanged, it is not necessary to re-adjust the flat fluorescent lamp.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a front view schematically showing a transmission optical microscope according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view showing an example of a flat fluorescent lamp.

3 is a cross-sectional view of the flat fluorescent lamp shown in FIG.

4 is a partially cutaway perspective view of the flat fluorescent lamp shown in FIG. 2. FIG.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing an example of a lighting power supply.

FIG. 6 is a graph showing an example of a rectangular wave for controlling a parallel glow discharge oscillated from an oscillator.

FIG. 7 is a plan view in which the light emitting surface of the flat fluorescent lamp is divided into vertical and horizontal three columns, the brightness of each part is measured, and the relative values of these measured values in each part are entered in each part.

FIG. 8 is a side view showing a modified example of the microscope of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a side view showing another modification of the microscope of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

3 ... Mirror body, 6 ... Objective lens, 9 ... Flat fluorescent lamp unit,
12 ... Power source, 15 ... Sample, 17 ... Oscillation circuit. 18 ... Inverter circuit, 19 ... Flat fluorescent lamp, 20 ... A / D converter.

Claims (1)

Claims for utility model registration 1. In a transmission optical microscope for illuminating a sample by a bright field illumination method and observing transmitted light transmitted through the sample, an objective lens, means for supporting the sample, and plane fluorescence. A flat fluorescent lamp having a layer and a means for generating a glow discharge that excites the fluorescent layer to emit light, so that the flat fluorescent layer is located outside the depth of focus of the objective lens at the time of focusing. And a flat fluorescent lamp unit for bright-field illuminating the sample.