Shifting molecular localization by plasmonic coupling in a single-molecule mirage

MARIO RAAB; CAROLIN VIETZ; FERNANDO D STEFANI; GUILLERMO P ACUNA; PHILIP TINNEFELD

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS

Nature Publishing Group

Año: 2017 vol. 8 p. 13966 - 13966

2041-1723

Over the last decade, two fields have dominated the attention of sub-diffraction photonics research: plasmonics and fluorescence nanoscopy. Nanoscopy based on single-molecule localisation offers a practical way to explore plasmonic interactions with nanometre resolution. However, this seemingly straightforward technique may retrieve false positional information. Here, we make use of the DNA origami technique to both control a nanometric separation between emitters and a gold nanoparticle, and as a platform for super-resolution imaging based on single-molecule localisation. This enables a quantitative comparison between the position retrieved from single-molecule localisation, the true position of the emitter and full-field simulations. We demonstrate that plasmonic coupling leads to shifted molecular localisations of up to 30 nm: a single-molecule mirage.