Super-resolution on a chip
In fluorescence microscopy, the diffraction of light causes individual fluorescence molecules to appear as fuzzy spots. If molecules are close together, these spots overlap, making them impossible to distinguish. This limits the resolution of an optical microscope to around half the wavelength of the fluorescence emission.
Our photonic chip-TIRF technology is compatible with various fluorescence-based super-resolution microscopy methods including:
- Single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM), where the temporal ON/OFF blinking of the fluorophores is exploited, enabling precise localizations of multiple emitters within a diffraction spot.
- Fluorescence fluctuation-based super-resolution microscopy (FF-SRM), where the intensity fluctuations of neighboring pixels are statistically analyzed over time to estimate the location of the emitting fluorophores.
