Nat. Photon. http://doi.org/c93w (2019).

Single-molecule localization microscopy approaches achieve high lateral localization accuracy and precision. However, methods for achieving similarly high axial localization precision have tended to be more specialized or technically complex. Metal-induced energy transfer (MIET) is an established approach for accurate determination of an emitter’s axial position, based on the fluorescence modulation caused by the electromagnetic coupling of an emitter to surface plasmons in an underlying metal layer. Ghosh et al. now further improve this approach by demonstrating that replacing the metal layer with a graphene layer also allows for electromagnetic coupling, but with a smaller coupling range, which leads to a tenfold improvement in axial localization determination compared to conventional MIET. The researchers demonstrated that their approach can achieve sub-nanometer localization accuracy with low photon budgets, an impressive achievement for localization microscopy.