Darkfield Microscopy

Darkfield Microscopy provides an image of the light scattered by the specimen, using spatial filtering to exclude unscattered light. Under darkfield illumination, flat surfaces appear dark, and features such as cracks, pores and etched boundaries are enhanced. Darkfield epillumination is therefore useful for detection of defects in opaque, unstained materials such as semiconductor wafers. Because the illumination must be spatially filtered, light sources with higher output intensity than those used for transmitted light microscopy are required.