Related papers: A digital microarray using interferometric detecti…
Optical detection of individual nanometer-sized analytes, virus particles, and protein molecules holds great promise for understanding and control of biological samples and healthcare applications. As fluorescent labels impose restrictions…
Detection and characterization of individual nano-scale particles, virions, and pathogens are of paramount importance to human health, homeland security, diagnostic and environmental monitoring[1]. There is a strong demand for…
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive and label-free technique widely used in medical diagnosis and life science research, and its success has benefited greatly from continuing efforts on enhancing contrast and resolution. Here…
Optical biosensors are indispensable in medical and environmental diagnostics, yet existing approaches are fundamentally limited in their sensitivity due to ensemble-averaged measurements. Digital biosensing has emerged as a promising…
Over the last decade, single-molecule optical microscopy has become the gold-standard approach to decipher complex molecular processes in cellular environments. [1-3] Single-molecule fluorescence microscopy has several advantages such as…
Infrared spectroscopy is the technique of choice for chemical identification of biomolecules through their vibrational fingerprints. However, infrared light interacts poorly with nanometric size molecules. Here, we exploit the unique…
Current optical detection schemes for single molecules require light absorption, either to produce fluorescence or direct absorption signals. This severely limits the range of molecules that can be detected, because most molecules are…
DNA microarrays are a relatively new technology that can simultaneously measure the expression level of thousands of genes. They have become an important tool for a wide variety of biological experiments. One of the most common goals of DNA…
More than twenty years ago, scientists succeeded in pushing the limits of optical detection to single molecules using fluorescence. This breakthrough has revolutionized biophysical measurements, but restrictions in photophysics and labeling…
Our growing ability to tailor healthcare to the needs of individuals has the potential to transform clinical treatment. However, the measurement of multiple biomarkers to inform clinical decisions requires rapid, effective, and affordable…
Imaging of the optical properties of individual nanosystems beyond fluorescence can provide a wealth of information. However, the minute signals for absorption and dispersion are challenging to observe, and only specialized techniques…
Interferometric scattering microscopy has been a very promising technology for highly sensitive label-free imaging of a broad spectrum of biological nanoparticles from proteins to viruses in a high-throughput manner. Although it can reveal…
There is a growing need for biolabels that can be used in both optical and electron microscopies, are non-cytotoxic, and do not photobleach. Such biolabels could enable targeted nanoscale imaging of sub-cellular structures, and help to…
We report a comparison of two photonic techniques for single-molecule sensing: fluorescence nanoscopy and optoplasmonic sensing. As the test system, oligonucleotides with and without fluorescent labels are transiently hybridized to…
Solid-state nanopores are emerging platforms for single-molecule protein sequencing due to their tolerance to hash physiology environment and compatibility with different electrical and optical detection methods. However, they suffer from…
Label-free detection techniques for single particles and molecules play an important role in basic science, disease diagnostics, and nanomaterial investigations. While traditional fluorescence-based methods offer powerful tools for single…
Optical mapping by direct visualization of individual DNA molecules, stretched in nanochannels with sequence-specific fluorescent labeling, represents a promising tool for disease diagnostics and genomics. An important challenge for this…
Specialized applications of nanoparticles often call for particular, well-characterized particle size distributions in solution. But, this property can prove difficult to measure. High-throughput methods, such as dynamic light scattering,…
Single-molecule detection enables direct observation of individual biomolecular events, providing mechanistic insights into biological processes and offering a powerful tool for disease diagnostics. However, the fundamental scale mismatch…
Although fluorescence is the prevailing labeling technique in biosensing applications, sensitivity improvement is still a striving challenge. We show that coating standard microscope slides with nanoroughened silver films provides a high…