Orthogonal Nanoprobes for One- and Two-Color Optical Super-Resolution Microscopy Imaging of Distinct Nanodomains in Composite Diblock Copolymer Thin Films

Optical super-resolution microscopy (OSRM) methods provide fluorescence imaging capabilities below the diffraction limit of light. While this novel set of techniques has been rapidly applied to biology, its adoption in soft matter has been considerably slower. This gradual implementation is due in large part to the lack of probes able to orthogonally label and provide super-resolution images of e.g. polymer nanostructures in the condensed state. Here, we introduce a novel class of ultrasmall aluminosilicate nanoparticles ("aC’ dots") employed in stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) with a single excitation source and without specific aqueous imaging buffers. Tailoring both encapsulated dye and aC’ dot surface chemistry affords straightforward protocols for multicolor OSRM on diffraction-limited features of chemically dissimilar BCP nanodomains, paving the way for multiplexed OSRM analysis of polymer nanostructures.

Reference:
J. A. Hinckley,* D. V. Chapman,* K. R. Hedderick, K. W. Oleske, L. A. Estroff, U. B. Wiesner, ACS Macro Lett. 8 (2019), 1378–1382.