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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 13: Colloidal and Nanoparticles
CPP 13.11: Talk
Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 17:45–18:00, C 264
A new method to detect and characterize single metallic nanoparticles using confocal microscopy — •Tina Züchner1, Antonio Virgilio Failla1, Achim Hartschuh2, and Alfred Johann Meixner1 — 1Institut für Physikalische und Theoretische Chemie, Universität Tübingen, Germany — 2present address: Department für Chemie und Biochemie, LMU München, Germany
A new confocal microscopy method for imaging single metallic nanoparticles is presented. It provides information about the particle's shape, size and orientation. For excitation azimuthally and radially polarized doughnut modes [1] were used. The particles were immobilized on glass or embedded in media of different refractive indices. Both the scattered light from the particles and the light reflected at the glass slide were collected and contributed to the image. The resulting patterns were studied experimentally and theoretically. Particles of different shapes (spheres, rods and triangles) could be distinguished [4] and the refractive index mismatch at the sample interface could be detected. For metallic nanorods the 2-dim. orientation can be directly imaged [2] with high precision [3]. Preliminary data shows that the method also allows to determine the 3-dim. orientation of nanorods.
[1] R. Dorn, S. Quabis and G. Leuchs, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 233901 (2003). [2] A.V. Failla, H. Qian, H. Qian, A. Hartschuh and A.J. Meixner, Nano Lett. 6, 1374 (2006). [3] A.V. Failla, S. Jäger, T. Züchner, M. Steiner and A.J. Meixner, Opt. Expr. 15, 8532 (2007). [4] T. Züchner, A.V. Failla, A. Hartschuh and A.J. Meixner, J. Microsc., in print (2007).