Physics

Illumination system for sub-diffraction resolution microscopy

S. A. Asselborn, E. S. Zatsepin, D. S. Isakov, A. M. Gerasimov, D. G. Pikhulya, Yu. V. Miklyaev

South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russian Federation

Abstract: Illumination scheme for superresolution microscopy is developed. The scheme accomplishes dark filed illumination with a laser light source including spatial coherence suppression. The scheme allows to observe nanoparticles with a size smaller than 50 nm. This is necessary to get higher resolution in the previously proposed method of superresolution microscopy (Near field Optical Random Microscopy - NORM). This method is based on real-time video processing of a nanoparticles Brownian motion those are located near the object surface. The method of vertical coordinate measurement is demonstrated. This method is based on astigmatic nanoparticle imaging. Three-dimensional distributions of suspended nanoparticles are obtained. Vertical resolution better than 200 nm and lateral resolution better than 100 nm are demonstrated.

Keywords: microscopy, nanoscopy, near-field microscopy, super-resolution, nanoparticles, particle trajectory analysis, video processing.

UDC: 57.086.2

Received: 20.04.2022

DOI: 10.14529/mmph220308