Direct observation Brownian motion of individual nanoparticles in water using microsphere-assisted microscopy
- 23 June 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Optica Publishing Group in Optics Letters
- Vol. 46 (13), 3099-3102
- https://doi.org/10.1364/ol.427144
Abstract
Observing Brownian motion of nanoscale objects through a traditional optical microscope is still a challenge. Here, we present a method to overcome this challenge by using a traditional optical microscope assisted with a removable microsphere-embedded thin film. The diffusion coefficient of individual unconstrained polystyrene (PS) nanoparticles with a diameter of 300 nm in water is calculated from their respective mean-square displacement versus time curves, and the measured diffusion coefficient shows good agreement with the theoretical Stokes-Einstein one, proving the feasibility of our method. In addition, the experimental results show that the movement of the PS nanoparticles is slowed down near a plane wall, and the diffusion coefficient is consistent with the theoretical constrained diffusion coefficient, which shows that our method can also study the constrained Brownian motion of nanoparticles constrained near a plane wall. Our research results are helpful for the application of microsphere-assisted microscopy in new fields and also provide a new method for nanoparticle tracking. (C) 2021 Optical Society of AmericaFunding Information
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (61673287)
- Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX21)
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