<br/>Following the real-time motions of single nanoparticles in 3D has broad applications in areas ranging from physics, chemistry, to biology. It is, however, still challenging to resolve the dynamics of single nanoscale objects in a high-background environments. For example, in biological materials, autofluorescence and excitation-induced scattering tend to render observation of nanoprobes difficult. In this presentation, we introduce a new concept which uses hardware-based logic operations to significantly improve the signal-to-background ratio of tracking individual fast 3D-diffusing nanoprobes in high-background environments. The instrument integrates ideas from time-correlated single-photon counting and coincidence detection implementations, allowing on-line photon-arrival analysis at a rate as high as 100 MHz. By leveraging the long photoluminescence lifetime of a novel type of non-blinking quantum dots, a maximum ~100-fold improvement in signal-to-background ratio was achieved. Compared with previous works, a 33-fold improvement in terms of the mobility of the tracked nanoparticles was observed. By coupling to other imaging and control modalities, this lifetime-gated RT-3DSPT idea should help expanding the application scope of single nano-object imaging and spectroscopy.

Time-gated real-time 3D single-particle tracking

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.