Quantitative Comparison of Dye and Ultrasmall Fluorescent Silica Core-Shell Nanoparticle Probes for Optical Super-Resolution Imaging of Model Block Copolymer Thin Film Surfaces.

In recent years, high-resolution optical imaging in the far field has provided opportunities for alternative approaches to nanocharacterization traditionally dominated by electron and scanning probe microscopies. Here, we report the optical super-resolution imaging of model block copolymer (BCP) thin film surface nanostructures through stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM). We compare a set of surface-functionalized fluorescent core-shell silica nanoparticles encapsulating two different organic dyes, Cy3 and Cy5, with the corresponding free dyes in STORM.