Affiliation:
1. Guangdong Engineering and Technology Research Center for Advanced Nanomaterials School of Environment and Civil Engineering Dongguan University of Technology Dongguan 523808 China
2. School of Biomedical Engineering Faculty of Engineering and IT University of Technology Sydney NSW 2007 Australia
3. Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta‐Optical Systems Department of Electronic Materials Engineering Research School of Physics The Australian National University Canberra ACT 2600 Australia
4. School of Electrical and Data Engineering Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology University of Technology Sydney NSW 2007 Australia
5. School of Physics Beihang University Beijing 100191 China
6. School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences Faculty of Science University of Technology Sydney NSW 2007 Australia
7. Centre for Audio Acoustics and Vibration Faculty of Engineering and IT University of Technology Sydney Ultimo NSW 2007 Australia
Abstract
AbstractOptical multiplexing for nanoscale object recognition is of great significance within the intricate domains of biology, medicine, anti‐counterfeiting, and microscopic imaging. Traditionally, the multiplexing dimensions of nanoscopy are limited to emission intensity, color, lifetime, and polarization. Here, a novel dimension, optical nonlinearity, is proposed for super‐resolved multiplexing microscopy. This optical nonlinearity is attributable to the energy transitions between multiple energy levels of the doped lanthanide ions in upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs), resulting in unique optical fingerprints for UCNPs with different compositions. A vortex beam is applied to transport the optical nonlinearity onto the imaging point‐spread function (PSF), creating a robust super‐resolved multiplexing imaging strategy for differentiating UCNPs with distinctive optical nonlinearities. The composition information of the nanoparticles can be retrieved with variations of the corresponding PSF in the obtained image. Four channels multiplexing super‐resolved imaging with a single scanning, applying emission color and nonlinearity of two orthogonal imaging dimensions with a spatial resolution higher than 150 nm (1/6.5λ), are demonstrated. This work provides a new and orthogonal dimension – optical nonlinearity – to existing multiplexing dimensions, which shows great potential in bioimaging, anti‐counterfeiting, microarray assays, deep tissue multiplexing detection, and high‐density data storage.
Funder
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
Australian Research Council
National Heart Foundation of Australia
Subject
Mechanical Engineering,Mechanics of Materials,General Materials Science