Recently, super-resolution microscopy has emerged as a useful tool to study plasmonic nanoparticles and their interactions with molecules, as this technique can provide spatial resolution far beyond the diffraction-limit of light. In this technique, a model point-spread function (PSF) is used as a model to fit diffraction-limited images of plasmon-mediated emission in order to extract the center of emission (centroid). While this technique has been well developed in the realm of single-molecule fluorescence, its application to plasmonically-mediated emission is much more recent. As shown by the super-resolution single-molecule fluorescence community, the choice of PSF model can have a large impact on the accuracy of the fit-extracted centroid. Previous single-molecule studies have shown that modeling the full dipolar-emission pattern of single molecules can give more accurate centroid positions for these emitters than the commonly used 2-dimensional Gaussian approximation, especially for non-planar or out of focus dipole emitters. Based on this work from the single-molecule community, we have applied dipole-emission PSF fitting models in order to fit plasmonically-mediated emission, and compared the results to the commonly used Gaussian PSF approximation. These results indicated that the dipole-emission model provides more accurate centroid localization in addition to giving information on the emitting plasmon modes of the nanostructure.

Superstudies of plasmonically mediated emission: Beyond the Gaussian point-spread function

249th National Meeting (2015)

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