Female Investigators in Nonlinear Optical Nanoscopy - FINON (FINON)

To establish nonlinear and vibrational microscopy at the nano-level in order to study metallic nanostructures and macromolecular suprastructures without perturbing labelling molecules or sample preparation procedures.

 

 

To establish and compare the chemical sensitivity and spatial resolution of all nano-scale imaging approaches for the visualization of molecular suprastructures, primarily different kinds of amyloid peptides, oligomers and fibrils will be investigated.

• Nonlinear and nearfield nanoscopy and spectroscopy of molecular suprastructures in air; composition, orientation and symmetry of sub-units
  
• Insulin beta amyloids in air: CARS microscopy images of larger insulin beta amyloid fibers 

 

• Microtubules in axons: SHG microscopy images of cortical neurons

 
 

To investigate the nonlinear generation of light emission from metallic nanostructures and explore their use for nano-photonic devices and as tracing/sensing agents in cells, tissues and polymeric materials a series of fundamental studies on different nonlinear excitation schemes in nanoparticles, nanoholes, and nano-antennas will be conducted with the nonlinear nano-scale visualization techniques developed in WP 1.

• Four-wave mixing images of nanoparticles in cells

​(1) To develop a protocol for drug screening in a 3D tissue model using nonlinear microscopy.

(2) To track nanoparticle endocytosis and endosomal escape at the single particle level to reveal receptor-mediated transport pathways for therapeutic delivery 

(3) To investigate the water behaviour inside fuel cell membrane for sustainable energy conversion

• Nonlinear microscopy images of cells grown on protein engineered scaffolds

• Resonant Four-wave mixing microscopy of gold nanoparticles in cells correlative with fluorescence microscopy