Subsurface Super-resolution Imaging of Unstained Polymer Nanostructures

Optical imaging has offered unique advantages in material researches, such as spectroscopy and lifetime measurements of deeply embedded materials, which cannot be matched using electron or scanning-probe microscopy. Unfortunately, conventional optical imaging cannot provide the spatial resolutions n...

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Main Authors:	Urban, Ben E., Dong, Biqin, Nguyen, The-Quyen, Backman, Vadim, Sun, Cheng, Zhang, Hao F.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Nature Publishing Group 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4926209/

id	pubmed-4926209
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-49262092016-07-01 Subsurface Super-resolution Imaging of Unstained Polymer Nanostructures Urban, Ben E. Dong, Biqin Nguyen, The-Quyen Backman, Vadim Sun, Cheng Zhang, Hao F. Article Optical imaging has offered unique advantages in material researches, such as spectroscopy and lifetime measurements of deeply embedded materials, which cannot be matched using electron or scanning-probe microscopy. Unfortunately, conventional optical imaging cannot provide the spatial resolutions necessary for many nanoscopic studies. Despite recent rapid progress, super-resolution optical imaging has yet to be widely applied to non-biological materials. Herein we describe a method for nanoscopic optical imaging of buried polymer nanostructures without the need for extrinsic staining. We observed intrinsic stochastic fluorescence emission or blinking from unstained polymers and performed spatial-temporal spectral analysis to investigate its origin. We further applied photon localization super-resolution imaging reconstruction to the detected stochastic blinking, and achieved a spatial resolution of at least 100 nm, which corresponds to a six-fold increase over the optical diffraction limit. This work demonstrates the potential for studying the static heterogeneities of intrinsic polymer molecular-specific properties at sub-diffraction-limited optical resolutions. Nature Publishing Group 2016-06-29 /pmc/articles/PMC4926209/ /pubmed/27354178 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep28156 Text en Copyright © 2016, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Urban, Ben E. Dong, Biqin Nguyen, The-Quyen Backman, Vadim Sun, Cheng Zhang, Hao F.
spellingShingle	Urban, Ben E. Dong, Biqin Nguyen, The-Quyen Backman, Vadim Sun, Cheng Zhang, Hao F. Subsurface Super-resolution Imaging of Unstained Polymer Nanostructures
author_facet	Urban, Ben E. Dong, Biqin Nguyen, The-Quyen Backman, Vadim Sun, Cheng Zhang, Hao F.
author_sort	Urban, Ben E.
title	Subsurface Super-resolution Imaging of Unstained Polymer Nanostructures
title_short	Subsurface Super-resolution Imaging of Unstained Polymer Nanostructures
title_full	Subsurface Super-resolution Imaging of Unstained Polymer Nanostructures
title_fullStr	Subsurface Super-resolution Imaging of Unstained Polymer Nanostructures
title_full_unstemmed	Subsurface Super-resolution Imaging of Unstained Polymer Nanostructures
title_sort	subsurface super-resolution imaging of unstained polymer nanostructures
description	Optical imaging has offered unique advantages in material researches, such as spectroscopy and lifetime measurements of deeply embedded materials, which cannot be matched using electron or scanning-probe microscopy. Unfortunately, conventional optical imaging cannot provide the spatial resolutions necessary for many nanoscopic studies. Despite recent rapid progress, super-resolution optical imaging has yet to be widely applied to non-biological materials. Herein we describe a method for nanoscopic optical imaging of buried polymer nanostructures without the need for extrinsic staining. We observed intrinsic stochastic fluorescence emission or blinking from unstained polymers and performed spatial-temporal spectral analysis to investigate its origin. We further applied photon localization super-resolution imaging reconstruction to the detected stochastic blinking, and achieved a spatial resolution of at least 100 nm, which corresponds to a six-fold increase over the optical diffraction limit. This work demonstrates the potential for studying the static heterogeneities of intrinsic polymer molecular-specific properties at sub-diffraction-limited optical resolutions.
publisher	Nature Publishing Group
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4926209/
_version_	1613601343803490304

Subsurface Super-resolution Imaging of Unstained Polymer Nanostructures

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