Superresolution Imaging

In 1995 Eric Betzig (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014) proposed to exploit single molecules to circumvent the classical diffraction limit of optical microscopy. (E. Betzig, Proposed Method for molecular optical imaging, Optics Letters 20 (1995) 237)
The first successful demonstration of this approach was done in 1998 using the model system of pentacene in p-terphenyl at cryogenic temperatures. Meanwhile, many groups have developed this technique futher to visualize small structures in biological matter under ambient conditions.
Together with our Russian colleagues from Troitsk we resumed the low temperature work in 2009 for visualizing local strains and variations of local electric fields in polycrystalline matter.

read more:

• A.M. van Oijen, J.Köhler, J.Schmidt, M.Müller and G.J.Brakenhoff
  3-Dimensional Super-Resolution by Spectrally Selective Imaging
  Chem. Phys. Lett. 292 (1998) 183-187
  (for comment see: R. van den Berg, Molecular Imaging Beats Limits of Light,
  Science 281 (1998) 629
  
• A.M. van Oijen, J.Köhler, J.Schmidt, M.Müller and G.J.Brakenhoff
  Far-field Microscopy beyond the Diffraction Limit.
  J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 16 (1999) 909-915
• A.V. Naumov, A.A. Gorshelev, Y.G. Vainer, L. Kador, J. Köhler
  Far-Field Nano-Diagnostics of Solids with Visible Light by Spectrally Selective Imaging
  Ang. Chem. Int. Ed., 48 (2009) 9747-9750, DOI: 10.1002/anie.200905101
  Ang. Chem. 121 (2009) 9930-9934
• A.V. Naumov, A.A. Gorshelev, Y.G. Vainer, L. Kador, J. Köhler
  Impurity Spectroscopy at its Ultimate Limit: Relation Between Bulk Spectrum,
  Inhomogeneous Broadening, and Local Disorder by Spectroscopy of (nearly) all Individual Dopant Molecules in Solids
  Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 13 (2011) 1734-1742, DOI 10.1039/c0cp1689f
• A.V. Naumov, A.A. Gorshelev, M.G. Gladush, T.A. Anikushina, A.V. Golovanova, J. Köhler, L. Kador
  Micro-Refractometry and Local-Field Mapping with Single Molecules
  Nano Lett. 18 (2018) 6129-6134, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b01753