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  • Small-2023-Wang

    Accepted author manuscript, 6.5 MB, PDF document

    Licence: Unspecified

DOI

Super-resolution optical imaging techniques can break the optical diffraction limit, thus providing unique opportunities to visualize the microscopic world at the nanoscale. Although near-field optical microscopy techniques have been proven to achieve significantly improved imaging resolution, most near-field approaches still suffer from a narrow field of view (FOV) or difficulty in obtaining wide-field images in real time, which may limit their widespread and diverse applications. Here, the authors experimentally demonstrate an optical microscope magnification and image enhancement approach by using a submillimeter-sized solid immersion lens (SIL) assembled by densely-packed 15 nm TiO2 nanoparticles through a silicone oil two-step dehydration method. This TiO2 nanoparticle-assembled SIL can achieve both high transparency and high refractive index, as well as sufficient mechanical strength and easy-to-handle size, thus providing a fast, wide-field, real-time, non-destructive, and low-cost solution for improving the quality of optical microscopic observation of a variety of samples, including nanomaterials, cancer cells, and living cells or bacteria under conventional optical microscopes. This study provides an attractive alternative to simplify the fabrication and applications of high-performance SILs.

Keywords

  • nano self-assembly, solid immersion lens, super-resolution optical microscopy, titanium dioxide nanoparticles
Original languageEnglish
Article number2207596
JournalSmall
Volume19
Issue number23
Early online date10 Mar 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Jun 2023
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