A stainless-steel based micro-scanner with magnetic actuation is fabricated via lasercutting technology targeted for confocal microscopy. Laser cutting offers low-cost and high speed fabrication of such scanners. The device is designed to establish a 2D Lissajous pattern. For a coil drive of 180 mA, fabricated scanner is able to deliver 4 degrees of optical scan angle for both slow scan and fast scan axes at 663 Hz and 2211 Hz, respectively. Fabricated mirror is integrated into a confocal microscopy setup and tested with the United States Air Force target accomplishing a 200 μm × 200 μm field of view and sub 10 μm resolution. With further improvement, our scanner will contribute to manufacturing of low-cost and compact scanning microscopy technologies.

A micro-scanner made of stainless-steel is fabricated via laser cutting technology for 3D Lissajous confocal imaging. The multi-gimbaled structure of the device provides two orthogonal torsional modes and three different out-of-plane modes. Torsional modes can be used to achieve 2D scan and all of the out-of-plane modes can be used in changing the focus of the micro-scanner to achieve a 3D scanning pattern. One of the out-of-plane modes along with two orthogonal torsional modes can be employed for scanning a large depth-stack in sparse fashion while another out-of-plane mode can satisfy a much higher scan fill-rate with less field of view (FOV). Simulations of the micro-scanner are obtained using finite element method (FEM) software and compared with the characterization data gathered from Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV). Using various out-of-plane modes, the constructed fill patterns are simulated on MATLAB and fill rates compared.

This paper summarizes the design, fabrication, and characterization of a magnetically actuated stainless-steel based micro-scanner. The out-of-plane deflection of the proposed device is calculated by using a custom depth scan setup. The main advantage of laser cutting technology, which is utilized in manufacturing the proposed steel scanner, is its rapid fabrication capability at low cost, while still offering high frequency scan for imaging and/or ablation with high frame-rates. In the lateral plane, the scanner delivers 5 degrees of total optical scan angle for a current drive of 60 mA for both slow scan and fast scan axes at 998 Hz and 2795 Hz, respectively. Furthermore, the device provides an out-of-plane pumping mode at 1723 Hz that could be utilized for axial scanning to create focal shift at the target. Fabricated scanner is integrated into a confocal microscopy setup and tested with a resolution target and a Convallaria rhizome sample, accomplishing a 240 µm × 240 µm field of view with 2.8 µm resolution. The device offers 218 µm depth of field (in tissue) and based on acquired resonance frequencies, we estimate rapid scanning of a three-dimensional block of tissue (240 µm × 240 µm × 218 µm size) with approximately 3 block per second with 50% fill rate and total coverage of 87% for 1 s scan. Finally, a custom setup is proposed for 3D imaging and validity of the 3D beam steering of the micro-scanner is tested.