The use of laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) in materials science

Laser scanning confocal microscopes are essential and ubiquitous tools in the biological, biochemical and biomedical sciences, and play a similar role to scanning electron microscopes in materials science. However, modern laser scanning confocal microscopes have a number of advantages for the study of materials, in addition to their obvious uses for high resolution reflected and transmitted light optical microscopy. In this paper, we provide several examples that exploit the laser scanning confocal microscope's capabilities of pseudo-infinite depth of field imaging, topographic imaging, photo-stimulated luminescence imaging and Raman spectroscopic imaging.