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Wide-field optical detection of nanoparticles using on-chip microscopy and self-assembled nanolenses

Nature Photonics volume 7, pages 247–254 (2013)Cite this article

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An Erratum to this article was published on 27 February 2013

This article has been updated

Abstract

The direct observation of nanoscale objects is a challenging task for optical microscopy because the scattering from an individual nanoparticle is typically weak at optical wavelengths. Electron microscopy therefore remains one of the gold standard visualization methods for nanoparticles, despite its high cost, limited throughput and restricted field-of-view. Here, we describe a high-throughput, on-chip detection scheme that uses biocompatible wetting films to self-assemble aspheric liquid nanolenses around individual nanoparticles to enhance the contrast between the scattered and background light. We model the effect of the nanolens as a spatial phase mask centred on the particle and show that the holographic diffraction pattern of this effective phase mask allows detection of sub-100 nm particles across a large field-of-view of >20 mm2. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, we report on-chip detection of individual polystyrene nanoparticles, adenoviruses and influenza A (H1N1) viral particles.

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Figure 1: Experimental setup, numerical model and sample preparation.
Figure 2: Large-FOV lensfree holographic microscopy of nanoparticles.
Figure 3: Lensfree holographic reconstructions of nanoparticles.
Figure 4: Lensfree holographic detection of 198 nm and 95 nm polystyrene beads with and without self-assembled nanolenses.
Figure 5: Simulated digital holographic reconstructions illustrating how liquid nanolenses enable the detection of otherwise undetectable 95 nm particles.
Figure 6: Detection of viruses.

Change history

  • 13 February 2013

    In the version of this Article originally published online, the particle contact angle θp in Fig. 1b,ii should have been labelled as 50°. This has now been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the Article.

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Acknowledgements

Ozcan Research Lab acknowledges the support of the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an NSF CAREER Award, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's New Innovator Award (DP2OD006427) from the Office of The Director, NIH. The work at CEA-Leti was supported by the Carnot Institutes Network. The authors thank Hangfei Qi and Ren Sun of UCLA for H1N1 and adenovirus specimens.

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Author notes

  1. Onur Mudanyali and Euan McLeod: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Onur Mudanyali, Euan McLeod, Wei Luo, Alon Greenbaum, Ahmet F. Coskun & Aydogan Ozcan

  2. Bioengineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Onur Mudanyali, Euan McLeod, Wei Luo, Alon Greenbaum, Ahmet F. Coskun & Aydogan Ozcan

  3. CEA, LETI, MINATEC, 17 rue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble cedex 9, France

    Yves Hennequin & Cédric P. Allier

  4. California NanoSystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Aydogan Ozcan

  5. Department of Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Aydogan Ozcan

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Contributions

O.M. performed the experiments and processed the resulting data. E.M. developed the theory and conducted numerical simulations and the related analysis. E.M., W.L., A.G and A.F.C. assisted in conducting the experiments and data analysis. O.M., E.M., Y.H., C.P.A. and A.O. planned the research and O.M., E.M. and A.O. wrote the manuscript. A.O. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Aydogan Ozcan.

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Mudanyali, O., McLeod, E., Luo, W. et al. Wide-field optical detection of nanoparticles using on-chip microscopy and self-assembled nanolenses. Nature Photon 7, 247–254 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.337

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