Parallel Nanometric 3D Tracking of Intracellular Gold Nanorods Using Multifocal Two-Photon Microscopy

We report a novel technique for long-term parallel three dimensional (3D)-tracking of gold nanorods in live cells with nanometer resolution. Gold nanorods feature a strong plasmon-enhanced two-photon luminescence, can be easily functionalized, and have been shown to be nontoxic. These properties mak...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nano letters 2013-03, Vol.13 (3), p.980-986
Main Authors: van den Broek, Bram, Ashcroft, Brian, Oosterkamp, Tjerk H, van Noort, John
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Collective excitations (including excitons, polarons, plasmons and other charge-density excitations)
Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties
Cross-disciplinary physics: materials science
rheology
Electronic structure and electrical properties of surfaces, interfaces, thin films and low-dimensional structures
Exact sciences and technology
Gold
Imaging
Luminescence
Materials science
Microscopy
Nanocrystalline materials
Nanorods
Nanoscale materials and structures: fabrication and characterization
Nanostructure
Nanotubes
Optical properties and condensed-matter spectroscopy and other interactions of matter with particles and radiation
Optical properties of low-dimensional, mesoscopic, and nanoscale materials and structures
Photons
Physics
Surface and interface electron states
Three dimensional
Tracking
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Summary:We report a novel technique for long-term parallel three dimensional (3D)-tracking of gold nanorods in live cells with nanometer resolution. Gold nanorods feature a strong plasmon-enhanced two-photon luminescence, can be easily functionalized, and have been shown to be nontoxic. These properties make gold nanorods very suitable for in vivo two-photon luminescence microscopy. By rapid multifocal scanning, we combine the advantages of 3D molecular tracking methods using wide-field imaging with the advantages of two-photon microscopy. Isolated gold nanorods can be localized with a resolution of 4 nm in the xy-plane and 8 nm in the z-direction. The polarization-dependence of the two-photon luminescence signal can be used to resolve the angular orientation, even when two gold nanorods are separated by less than the diffraction limit. Individual nanorods in live U2OS cells could be followed in 3 dimensions for over 30 min, with a photon noise limited accuracy, and a time resolution of 50 ms in 2D and 500 ms in 3D.
ISSN:1530-6984
1530-6992
DOI:10.1021/nl3040509