Nikon Corporation

Toshio Uchikawa

Manabu Komatsu

Hiromasa Shibata

Satoshi Ejima

Makoto Yamasaki

To provide a liquid immersion microscope device enabling nondestructive liquid immersion observation of a substrate without deteriorating quality of the substrate. To attain this, a liquid immersion microscope device of the present invention includes a supporting unit supporting a substrate as an observation target, an objective lens of a liquid immersion type, a first supplying unit supplying ultrapure water as a liquid for observation to a gap between a tip of the objective lens and the substrate, a first draining unit draining the liquid for observation after observation of the substrate, a second supplying unit supplying a liquid for cleaning, which is different from the liquid for observation drained by the first draining unit, to an area, of the substrate, that has been in contact with the liquid for observation, and a second draining unit draining the liquid for cleaning after the substrate is cleaned.

Liquid immersion microscope

A microscope apparatus efficiently supplies and collects a liquid for observation by local liquid immersion. The apparatus includes an objective of a liquid immersion system, a discharging member for discharging the liquid between a front edge of the objective and a substrate, and a sucking member for sucking the liquid. Inclined faces are provided respectively in two positions adjacent to the front edge in the periphery of the objective, and protruded portions are provided in positions adjacent to the inclined faces. An aperture portion bounded by the protruded portions and the substrate is formed at the side face. The discharging member includes a tubular member provided on the inclined face for discharging the liquid. The sucking member includes another tubular member for sucking the liquid while taking in air via the aperture portion.

Adaptor for microscope and microscope apparatus (microscope-use adaptor and microscope device)

A sound processing apparatus is provided with a sound information input device, a recording device to record the sound information, a converting device to convert the sound information into image information, and a display device to display the image information, the display device being such that the vertical and horizontal directions of the display device are time axes and the unit of one of the time axes is longer than the unit of the other time axis. The image information displayed on the display device can be selected by a selection device to display the sound information. The sound information can also be displayed as image information corresponding to a frequency component of the sound information within a predetermined time. The frequency component may be detected using discrete cosine transformation (DCT) for compressing the sound information.

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Chigasaki, Japan

Toshio Uchikawa