Correlative atomic force and confocal fluorescence microscopy: single molecule imaging and force induced spectral shifts (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

A grand challenge in nanoscience is to correlate structure or morphology of individual nano-sized objects with their photo-physical properties. An early example have been measurements of the emission spectra and polarization of single semiconductor quantum dots as well as their crystallographic structure by a combination of confocal fluorescence microscopy and transmission electron microscopy.[1] Recently, the simultaneous use of confocal fluorescence and atomic force microscopy (AFM) has allowed for correlating the morphology/conformation of individual nanoparticle oligomers or molecules with their photo-physics.[2, 3] In particular, we have employed the tip of an AFM cantilever to apply compressive stress to single molecules adsorbed on a surface and follow the effect of the impact on the electronic states of the molecule by fluorescence spectroscopy.[3] Quantum mechanical calculations corroborate that the spectral changes induced by the localized force can be associated to transitions among the different possible conformers of the adsorbed molecule.