The diffraction limit is a fundamental barrier in optical microscopy, restricting the smallest resolvable feature size of a microscopic imaging system. Microsphere-assisted super-resolution microscopy has emerged as a promising approach for overcoming this limit. This technique offers several advantages, including no need of fluorescent dyes, easy operation under white light illumination, and good compatibility with commercial optical microscopes. Various strategies have been proposed to enhance the imaging performance of microspheres. Recently, patchy microspheres were found to exhibit super-resolution capabilities in air with an enhanced imaging contrast. In this work, we studied the super-resolution imaging performance of patchy microspheres fully immersed in liquid. Furthermore, we demonstrated the formation of photonic hooks from patchy microspheres within a liquid environment. The findings of this study will extent the application of patchy microspheres from air to liquid immersion mode, opening up new possibilities for super-resolution imaging in liquid environment with patchy microspheres.
Photonic Hooks (PHs) are non-evanescent light beams with a highly concentrated curved optical field. Since their discovery, PHs always have one single inflection point and thus have a hook-like structure. In this work, a new type of PHs with two inflection points and S-shaped structures were reported for the first time. We theoretically studied the effects of various physical parameters on the generation of S-shaped Photonic Hook (S-PH). The S-PH may have potential applications in super-resolution imaging, subwavelength micromachining, particle and cell manipulation, etc.
Microsphere-assisted imaging is a label-free super-resolution optical microscopic technique. In 2021, Shang et al. found that by coating microspheres with Ag films, the super-resolution imaging performance of microspheres can be significantly enhanced. Here we reported the progress of using patchy particles for super-resolution imaging, and we showed that the performance of the imaging system can also be enhanced by coating microspheres with Al films. Using Al instead of Ag can significantly reduce the cost of fabrication, and facilitates the commercialization of this technique.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.