The invention that first enabled researchers to see clear images of living cells was the phase-contrast microscope, which won its inventor, Frits Zernike, a Nobel Prize in 1932. Prior to Zernike's ...

A new microscopy technique allows scientists to see single-atom-thick boron nitride by making it glow under infrared light.

Using a “spooky” phenomenon of quantum physics, Caltech researchers have discovered a way to double the resolution of light microscopes. In a paper appearing in the journal Nature Communications, a ...

Raman microscopy combines optical microscopy with the ability to determine the chemical makeup of surfaces. Laser light is delivered to the sample surface via the same objective as the optical light ...

Researchers have incorporated a swept illumination source into an open-top light-sheet microscope to enable improved optical sectioning over a larger area of view. The advance makes the technique more ...

For centuries, scientists have used microscopes to magnify and peer into a world invisible to the naked eye. The earliest instruments were simple lens-filled tubes, the best of which revealed the ...

Within a modest engineering laboratory at Duke University, a new type of researcher is quietly at work next to an optical microscope. This new researcher has no need for coffee, does not become tired, ...