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STED microscopy reveals crystal colour centres with nanometric resolution

Nature Photonics volume 3, pages 144–147 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Because they have spin states that can be optically polarized and detected, fluorescent nitrogen vacancies in diamond1,2,3 have considerable potential for applications in quantum cryptography4,5 and computation6,7,8, as well as for nanoscale magnetic imaging9,10 and biolabelling11,12. However, their optical detection and control are hampered by the diffraction resolution barrier of far-field optics. Here, we show that stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy13,14 is capable of imaging nitrogen-vacancy centres with nanoscale resolution and Ångström precision using focused light. The far-field optical control of the population of their excited state at the nanoscale expands the versatility of these centres and demonstrates the suitability of STED microscopy to image dense colour centres in crystals. Nitrogen-vacancy defects show great potential as tags for far-field optical nanoscopy15 because they exhibit nearly ideal STED without bleaching. Measured point-spread functions of 5.8 nm in width demonstrate an all-physics-based far-field optical resolving power exceeding the wavelength of light by two orders of magnitude.

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Figure 1: Stimulated emission depletion of the excited state ‘switches off’ a charged nitrogen-vacancy colour centre by light.
Figure 2: Stimulated emission depletion microscopy reveals densely packed nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond.
Figure 3: STED microscopy without photobleaching.
Figure 4: Maximizing the resolving power by optimizing STED in a single direction.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge motivating discussions with R. Walsworth and M. Lukin about magnetic imaging and also with F. Jelezko, who provided us with the nitrogen-vacancy diamond crystals. Furthermore, we thank A. Schönle for support with the software ImSpector, and J. Keller and M. Lauterbach for help with data analysis software. S.E.I. and K.Y.H gratefully acknowledge support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and from the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (MOEHRD), respectively. K.Y.H. is on leave from the Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Korea.

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  1. Eva Rittweger, Kyu Young Han and Scott E. Irvine: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of NanoBiophotonics, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Am Fassberg 11, Göttingen, 37077, Germany

    Eva Rittweger, Kyu Young Han, Scott E. Irvine, Christian Eggeling & Stefan W. Hell

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  1. Eva Rittweger
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Correspondence to Stefan W. Hell.

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Rittweger, E., Han, K., Irvine, S. et al. STED microscopy reveals crystal colour centres with nanometric resolution. Nature Photon 3, 144–147 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2009.2

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