A miniature on-chip microscope

Digital-holography based lensless microscopes emerged as a simple and portable solution to the limitations of bench-top conventional optical microscopes. However, the existing lensless microscopes need additional optical and/or mechanical components to obtain sub-pixel resolution. In this work, we propose and demonstrate a lensless imaging system that eliminates such hardware overheads, using a microLED array display as illumination source. Small pitch of this bright microLED array allows subpixel shifts in the resulting holograms, opening way for super-resolution techniques. This on-chip microscope occupies only a few mm3 thus, is highly suited for point-of-care applications, offering various trade-offs and novel possibilities. © 2020 CBMS-000