Development of two dimensional scanner-on-scanner for confocal laser scanning microscope "LEXT" series

A two dimensional (2-D) Scanner-on-scanner (SOS) has been developed for commercial confocal laser scanning microscope (LSM) "LEXT\´ series. The SOS consists of a newly developed electromagnetic MEMS scanner mounted on a commercially available galvanometric scanner, being inclined at 45deg. The SOS realizes much smaller distortion in the 2-D scanning pattern than that obtained by gimbaled type MEMS 2-D scanner. Key issue is miniaturizing the MEMS scanner so that it can be mounted onto the galvanometric scanner. It was realized by using a coil for both driving and sensing so that sensing output was increased, and thus size reduction of permanent magnets have become possible, leading to the scanner volume of approximately 9.3 % of the one previously developed for a LSM, Olympus OLS1200