STED nanoscopy with wavelengths at the emission maximum

FERNANDO D STEFANI; FRANCISCO BALZAROTTI; MARTIN BORDENAVE; STEFAN W HELL

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS - D (APPLIED PHYSICS)

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2016 vol. 49 p. 365102 - 365102

0022-3727

Commonly, in stimulated emission depletion (STED) fluorescence nanoscopy, light of awavelength located at the red tail of the emission spectrum of the dye is used to shrinkthe effective fluorophore excitation volume and thus to obtain images with sub diffractionresolution. Here, we demonstrate that continuous wave (CW) STED nanoscopy is feasibleusing STED wavelengths located at the emission maximum, where the cross section forstimulated emission is up to 10-fold larger than at the red tail. As a result, STED imagingbecomes possible at equally lower STED beam power. Besides, fluorophores that have beenconsidered inapplicable in certain wavelength constellations are thus becoming usable.