title: Nanoaperture-enhanced signal-to-noise ratio in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy.
abstract: The fluorescence enhancement found in gold nanoapertures is demonstrated to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS). Starting from a general discussion on noise in FCS experiments, we show that fluorescence enhancement leads to a dramatic increase in the SNR. This prediction is confirmed by experiments where we report an experimental gain in SNR of about 1 order of magnitude, corresponding to a 100-fold reduction of the experiment duration. This technique is then applied to monitor the kinetics of a fast enzymatic cleavage reaction. This set of experiments evidence the feasibility of FCS analysis with fast integration times of about 1 s, opening the way to the monitoring of a variety of biochemical reactions at reduced time scales.
authors.affiliation: Institut Fresnel, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Domaine Universitaire de Saint-Jérôme, 13397 Marseille Cedex 20, France.
authors.forename: Jérôme
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wenger
authors.forename: Davy
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gérard
authors.forename: Heykel
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Aouani
authors.forename: Hervé
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rigneault
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001483:Base Sequence; D053837:DNA Cleavage; D004560:Electricity; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D036103:Nanotechnology; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D006046:Gold