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Wide-field optical sizing of single nanoparticles with 10 nm accuracy

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Abstract

There is an increasing demand for new technologies to rapidly measure individual nanoparticles in situ for applications, including early-stage diagnosis of human diseases and environmental monitoring. Here, we demonstrate a label-free wide-field optical microscopy capable of sizing dispersed non-luminescent dielectric nanoparticles (with diameters down to 22 nm) with 10 nm accuracy. This technique utilizes enhanced nanoparticle-perturbed scattering by surface plasmons created on a gold film. In the meantime, an azimuthal rotation illumination module is installed on this microscope and a differential image processing technique is carried out. The relationship between the scattering intensity and the particle size was experimentally measured with good consistency with the theoretical prediction. The capability of precise measurement of the size of dispersed nanoparticles within a larger field of view in a label-free, non-invasive and quantitative manner may find broad applications involving single nanoparticle chemistry and physics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Laser Technology Laboratory of Anhui Province, Department of Optics and Optical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Yang Liu, Yan Kuai & Douguo Zhang

  2. School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200093, China

    Qiwen Zhan

  3. Center for Fluorescence Spectroscopy, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, 21201, USA

    Joseph R. Lakowicz

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  1. Yang Liu
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  2. Yan Kuai
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  4. Joseph R. Lakowicz
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  5. Douguo Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Douguo Zhang.

Additional information

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0200601), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11774330, 92050202, and U20A20216), Anhui Initiative in Quantum Information Technologies (Grant No. AHY090000), Advanced Laser Technology Laboratory of Anhui Province (Grant No. 20192301), Hefei Municipal Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 2021007), and Key Research & Development Program of Anhui Province (Grant No. 202104a05020010). J. R. Lakowicz thanks the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (Grant Nos. R01 GM125976, and R21 GM129561) and National Institutes of Health (Grant Nos. S10OD19975, and S10RR026370) for support. The work was partially carried out at the University of Science and Technology of China’s Center for Micro and Nanoscale Research and Fabrication. D. G. Zhang is supported by a USTC Tang Scholarship.

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Liu, Y., Kuai, Y., Zhan, Q. et al. Wide-field optical sizing of single nanoparticles with 10 nm accuracy. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 64, 294213 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-021-1732-6

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