Faraday rotation imaging microscope with microsecond pulse magnet

We have fabricated a high-performance Faraday rotation (FR) imaging microscope that uses a microsecond pulse magnet comprising an insulated gated bipolar transistor and a 2 mu F capacitor. Our microscope produced images with greater stability and sensitivity than those of previous microscopes that used millisecond pulse magnet; these improvements are likely due to high repetition rate and negligible joule heating effects. The mechanical vibrations in the magnet coil caused by the pulsed current were significantly reduced. The present FR microscope constructed an averaged image from 1000 FR images within 10 min under 1.7 T. Applications of the FR microscope to discriminating three benzene derivatives in micro-capillaries and oscillation-free imaging of spherical polystyrene and polymethyl methacrylate microparticles demonstrated its high performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.