Mueller matrix imaging of electrospun ultrafine fibers for morphology detection

In the fields of tissue engineering, drug delivery, and filtering material, electrospun ultrafine fibers with micropores have important applications. A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is typically used to observe the microstructure of ultrafine fibers, but SEM has disadvantages, such as small field of vision, high cost, and ionization damage. Given this, 16 (4 x 4) full transmission Mueller matrices of electrospun fibers with three different morphologies, i.e., smooth surface, microporous, and beaded microspheres, were obtained. We find that the Mueller matrix element M-44 is most sensitive to the micropores on fibers. In the M-44 transformed image proposed in this paper, the different morphologies and contours of fibers can be clearly shown, providing a low-cost method for mass, nondestructive, and rapid morphology detection of fibers. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America