Center for Relativistic Laser Science

2017 120th KCS Meeting

Single molecule detection techniques have allowed one to observe biological systems. It is difficult to observe nanoscopic phenomena optically because of diffraction limit of optical detection. To overcome this limit, various super-resolution microscopy, such as fluorescence microscopy, have been developed. Although there are numerous advantages of fluorescence microscopy techniques, they usually suffer saturation of signal, photobleaching and photoblinking of fluorophores. These problems disrupt stable and long-term tracking of targets of interest. Here, we developed new experimental scheme based on interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT), which collects the interference between the scattering field from target and the reference field from interface of chamber. We constructed orientation sensitive optical system with linear polarized light and dual camera system. With signal difference between two images of which the linear polarized light is perpendicular to each other, orientational information of nanorod were delivered and also, we observed Brownian rotational motion of a single anisotropic gold nanorod.