Abstract
Nanodiamonds have emerged as promising agents for sensing and imaging due to their exceptional photostability and sensitivity to the local nanoscale environment. Here, we introduce a hybrid system composed of a nanodiamond containing nitrogen-vacancy center that is paired to a gold nanoparticle via DNA hybridization. Using multiphoton optical studies, we demonstrate that the harmonic mode emission generated in gold nanoparticles induces a coupled fluorescence emission in nanodiamonds. We show that the flickering of harmonic emission in gold nanoparticles directly influences the nanodiamonds’ emissions, resulting in stochastic blinking. By utilizing the stochastic emission fluctuations, we present a proof-of-principle experiment to demonstrate the potential application of the hybrid system for super-resolution microscopy. The introduced system may find applications in intracellular biosensing and bioimaging due to the DNA-based coupling mechanism and also the attractive characteristics of harmonic generation, such as low power, low background and tissue transparency.
Highlights
Nanodiamonds are attractive biomarkers in sensing applications because of their strong and stable fluorescence emission, robust structure and excellent biocompatibility [1–3]
The optical transitions in NV centers are sensitive to electromagnetic fields, temperature, pH and the nanoscale environment, enabling the localized sensing of small changes in complex environments [6–8]
A nanodiamond can be integrated with an atomic force microscope (AFM) to scan across a cell membrane or other surfaces, via measurement of the quantum decoherence of the NV probe [9,10]
Summary
Nanodiamonds are attractive biomarkers in sensing applications because of their strong and stable fluorescence emission, robust structure and excellent biocompatibility [1–3]. With the rise of super-resolution microscopy (SRM) [15,16], NV centers have attracted attention as potential probes for SRM [17]. We demonstrated that the NV centers in nanodiamonds can be excited via coupling with the GNPs’ second harmonic emission. The flickering of the harmonic surface plasmon modes in GNPs induced blinking in the n2aonf 1o0diamond emission. Harmonic surface plasmon modes in GNPs induced blinking in the nanodiamond emission. The concept builds on our previous study, where a target DNA was paurstesd, itnowcohuicphlehtawlfoodf itfhfeerseenqtluye-tnacgegiesdcGomNpPlsem[18e,n1t9a]r. D(cN) AAistrcaonmsmpoissseidonofeCle1ctarnodn Cm2i,crosccoopmep(lTeEmMen)tiamryasgeequoef nacceos utopDleNdAG1NaPn–dnDaNnoAd2i,armesopnedctisvterluyc. t(uc)reA. transmission electron microscope (TEM) image of a coupled GNP–nanodiamond structure
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