Polymer Colloidal Sphere-Based Hybrid Solid Immersion Lens for Optical Super-resolution Imaging.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27700047.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acsnano.6b06236.
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Abstract
The optical microscope is a widely used real-time investigation tool, but usually suffers from low resolution due to the Abbe diffraction limit. Herein, we design and successfully synthesize ZrO<sub>2</sub>/polymer hybrid colloidal microspheres with as high as 47.5 wt % inorganic nanoparticles by suspension polymerization of 9,9'-bis[4-(2-acryloyloxyethyloxy)phenyl]fluorene (BAEPF). Owing to the homogeneous dispersion, high density, and high refractive index of inorganic nanoparticles and deformability of polymers, the obtained ZrO<sub>2</sub>/poly(BAEPF) hybrid colloidal microspheres have a high refractive index, optical transparency, and controllable curvature and thus can be directly used as a hybrid solid immersion lens (hSIL) for the optical microscope, achieving super-resolution imaging of 50 nm and even 45 nm under a standard white light or blue light optical microscope, which is far beyond the diffraction limit for visible light optical microscopes. Our hSIL design concept and strategy demonstrate efficient, fast, and solid practical potentials for optical super-resolution imaging and may also create another application possibility for polymer colloidal spheres.