title: New photon-counting detectors for single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy and imaging.
abstract: Solution-based single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy is a powerful new experimental approach with applications in all fields of natural sciences. Two typical geometries can be used for these experiments: point-like and widefield excitation and detection. In point-like geometries, the basic concept is to excite and collect light from a very small volume (typically femtoliter) and work in a concentration regime resulting in rare burst-like events corresponding to the transit of a single-molecule. Those events are accumulated over time to achieve proper statistical accuracy. Therefore the advantage of extreme sensitivity is somewhat counterbalanced by a very long acquisition time. One way to speed up data acquisition is parallelization. Here we will discuss a general approach to address this issue, using a multispot excitation and detection geometry that can accommodate different types of novel highly-parallel detector arrays. We will illustrate the potential of this approach with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) and single-molecule fluorescence measurements. In widefield geometries, the same issues of background reduction and single-molecule concentration apply, but the duration of the experiment is fixed by the time scale of the process studied and the survival time of the fluorescent probe. Temporal resolution on the other hand, is limited by signal-to-noise and/or detector resolution, which calls for new detector concepts. We will briefly present our recent results in this domain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.
authors.forename: X
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Michalet
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Colyer
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Scalia
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.affiliation: Space Sciences Laboratory, UCB, Berkeley, CA.
authors.forename: Oswald H W
authors.initials: OH
authors.lastname: Siegmund
authors.affiliation: Space Sciences Laboratory, UCB, Berkeley, CA.
authors.forename: Anton S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Tremsin
authors.affiliation: Space Sciences Laboratory, UCB, Berkeley, CA.
authors.forename: John V
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Vallerga
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica de Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Villa
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica de Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Guerrieri
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica de Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Rech
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica de Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gulinatti
authors.affiliation: Micro Photon Devices, Bolzano, Italy.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tisa
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica de Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zappa
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica de Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ghioni
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica de Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cova
keywords: detector; fluorescence; imaging; photon-counting; single-molecule; spectroscopy
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