Single-molecule observation, characterization and manipulation techniques have recently come to the forefront of several research domains spanning chemistry, biology and physics. Due to the exquisite sensitivity, specificity, and unmasking of ensemble averaging, single-molecule fluorescence imaging and spectroscopy have become, in a short period of time, important tools in cell biology, biochemistry and biophysics. These methods led to new ways of thinking about biological processes such as viral infection, receptor diffusion and oligomerization, cellular signaling, protein–protein or protein–nucleic acid interactions, and molecular machines. Such achievements require a combination of several factors to be met, among which detector sensitivity and bandwidth are crucial. Here, the necessary performance of photodetectors used in these types of experiments, the current state of the art for different categories of detectors, and actual and future developments of single-photon counting detectors for single-molecule imaging and spectroscopy, are investigated.

中文翻译：

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用于单分子荧光成像和光谱学的探测器

单分子观察、表征和操作技术最近已成为化学、生物学和物理学等多个研究领域的前沿。由于整体平均的精湛灵敏度、特异性和揭示性，单分子荧光成像和光谱学已在短时间内成为细胞生物学、生物化学和生物物理学的重要工具。这些方法带来了思考生物过程的新方法，例如病毒感染、受体扩散和寡聚化、细胞信号传导、蛋白质-蛋白质或蛋白质-核酸相互作用以及分子机器。要取得这样的成就需要满足多个因素的结合，其中探测器的灵敏度和带宽至关重要。在这里，研究了这些类型的实验中使用的光电探测器的必要性能、不同类别探测器的当前技术水平，以及用于单分子成像和光谱学的单光子计数探测器的实际和未来发展。