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OPTICAL DIFFRACTION TOMOGRAPHY

Volume imaging of anisotropic materials

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 269–271 (2022)Cite this article

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Revealing the molecular orientations of anisotropic materials is desired in materials science and soft-matter physics. Now, an optical diffraction tomographic approach enables the direct reconstruction of dielectric tensors of anisotropic structures in three dimensions.

In biological, materials or technological studies, the optical microscope is an essential tool for observing samples at the microscopic scale. It illuminates the sample homogeneously with a lamp and detects the transmitted light through a magnification system. In standard microscopes, the variation of the recorded intensity can be related to the local absorption of the sample. In more sophisticated set-ups, using masks and polarizers on the illumination and detection paths, it reveals optical path differences or changes in the field polarization due to refractive index or birefringence inhomogeneities. However, the information provided by these images cannot be related easily to the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the sample1. To address this issue, an approach combining optical microscopy with computed tomography was proposed in the early 2000s2, and further work in this direction has enabled the 3D imaging and quantitative refractive index mapping of isotropic materials and biological samples3,4,5,6,7. However, the recovery of the full dielectric tensor of anisotropic materials has remained inaccessible. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Seungwoo Shin and colleagues report a dielectric tensor tomography technique capable of providing quantitative 3D images of local anisotropy8.

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Fig. 1: Principle of operation of the DTT method.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, Centrale Marseille, Institut Fresnel, Marseille, France

    Anne Sentenac, Guillaume Maire & Patrick C. Chaumet

Authors
  1. Anne Sentenac
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  2. Guillaume Maire
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  3. Patrick C. Chaumet
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Correspondence to Anne Sentenac.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Sentenac, A., Maire, G. & Chaumet, P.C. Volume imaging of anisotropic materials. Nat. Mater. 21, 269–271 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01213-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01213-5

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