STED nanoscopy (Stimulated Emission Depletion). which can resolve details far below the diffraction barrier has been applied hitherto preferentially to life sciences. The method is however also ideal for the investigation of geological matrices containing transparent minerals, an application tested here, to our knowledge, for the first time. The measurements on altered granitic rock and sedimentary clay rock, both containing very fine-grained phases, were conducted successfully. The STED fluorophore was dissolved in C-14-labelled methylmethacrylate (C-14-MMA) monomer which was polymerised within the rock matrix, thereby labelling the pore space in the geomaterials. Double labelling provided by the C-14-labelled MMA enables autoradiography and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), providing necessary complementary information for characterisation and quantification of porosity distributions and mineral and structure identification. Promising perspectives for further investigations of geological matrices by using different fluorophores and the optimisation of measuring procedures or even higher resolution are discussed. The combination of these different methods enlarges the observation scale of porosity from nanometre to centimetre scale.

中文翻译：

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STED 纳米显微镜——一种对地质材料孔隙空间成像的新方法

STED 纳米镜（受激发射损耗）。迄今为止，它可以解析远低于衍射屏障的细节，已优先应用于生命科学。然而，该方法对于研究含有透明矿物的地质基质也是理想的，据我们所知，这是第一次在这里测试的应用。对含有极细粒相的蚀变花岗岩和沉积粘土岩进行了成功的测量。STED 荧光团溶解在 C-14 标记的甲基丙烯酸甲酯 (C-14-MMA) 单体中，该单体在岩石基质内聚合，从而标记地质材料中的孔隙空间。C-14 标记的 MMA 提供的双重标记可实现放射自显影和扫描电子显微镜 (SEM)，为孔隙度分布的表征和量化以及矿物和结构识别提供必要的补充信息。讨论了通过使用不同的荧光团和优化测量程序甚至更高分辨率来进一步研究地质基质的前景。这些不同方法的结合使孔隙度的观测尺度从纳米尺度扩大到厘米尺度。