Beam-shaping optics for a slit-scan flow cytometer

Two sets of beam-shaping optical systems for slit-scan flow cytometry were made for 360 nm and 488 nm wavelength argon-ion lasers. A thin, ribbonlike laser beam was formed by compressing the zero-order component of Fraunhofer diffraction patterns caused by a slit vertically long and horizontally narrow by means of an objective with a numerical aperture of 0.5. The objectives were designed to include a jet stream that performed as a cylindrical lens. The characteristic values of the optical systems and lens alignments of the systems are described in this work. The beam size at focus was 0.95 micron in thinness and 85.0 microns in width on design values. The actual beam thinness for the UV laser was estimated to be 1.3 microns, based on shapes of pulses generated when fluorescence microspheres of diameter 1.0 microns passed across the beam. The usefulness of the optical systems was also proved by its ability to measure HeLa chromosomes.