Issue 8, 2022

Widefield phototransient imaging for visualizing 3D motion of resonant particles in scattering environments

Abstract

Identifying, visualising and ultimately tracking dynamically moving non-fluorescent nanoparticles in the presence of non-specific scattering is a long-standing challenge across the nano- and life-sciences. In this work we demonstrate that our recently developed ultrafast holographic transient (UHT) microscope is ideally suited for meeting this challenge. We show that UHT microscopy allows reliably distinguishing off-resonant, dielectric, from resonant, metallic, nanoparticles, based on the phototransient signal: a pre-requisite for single-particle tracking in scattering environments. We then demonstrate the capability of UHT microscopy to holographically localize in 3D single particles over large volumes of view. Ultimately, we combine the two concepts to simultaneously track several tens of freely diffusing gold nanoparticles, within a 110 × 110 × 110 μm volume of view at an integration time of 10 ms per frame, while simultaneously recording their phototransient signals. The combined experimental concepts outlined and validated in this work lay the foundation for background-free 3D single-particle tracking applications or spectroscopy in scattering environments and are immediately applicable to systems as diverse as live cells and tissues or supported heterogeneous catalysts.

Graphical abstract: Widefield phototransient imaging for visualizing 3D motion of resonant particles in scattering environments

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
15 Oct 2021
Accepted
16 Nov 2021
First published
07 Jan 2022
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale, 2022,14, 3062-3068

Widefield phototransient imaging for visualizing 3D motion of resonant particles in scattering environments

M. Liebel, F. V. A. Camargo, G. Cerullo and N. F. van Hulst, Nanoscale, 2022, 14, 3062 DOI: 10.1039/D1NR06837G

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