title: Polymer Colloidal Sphere-Based Hybrid Solid Immersion Lens for Optical Super-resolution Imaging.
abstract: The optical microscope is a widely used real-time investigation tool, but usually suffers from low resolution due to the Abbe diffraction limit. Herein, we design and successfully synthesize ZrO2/polymer hybrid colloidal microspheres with as high as 47.5 wt % inorganic nanoparticles by suspension polymerization of 9,9'-bis[4-(2-acryloyloxyethyloxy)phenyl]fluorene (BAEPF). Owing to the homogeneous dispersion, high density, and high refractive index of inorganic nanoparticles and deformability of polymers, the obtained ZrO2/poly(BAEPF) hybrid colloidal microspheres have a high refractive index, optical transparency, and controllable curvature and thus can be directly used as a hybrid solid immersion lens (hSIL) for the optical microscope, achieving super-resolution imaging of 50 nm and even 45 nm under a standard white light or blue light optical microscope, which is far beyond the diffraction limit for visible light optical microscopes. Our hSIL design concept and strategy demonstrate efficient, fast, and solid practical potentials for optical super-resolution imaging and may also create another application possibility for polymer colloidal spheres.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Haie
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Wen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Shuxue
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Limin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wu
keywords: colloidal spheres; optical imaging; optical microscopes; solid immersion lens