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Three-dimensional Orientation Sensors by Defocused Imaging of Gold Nanorods through an Ordinary Wide-Field Microscope

Gold (Au) nanoparticles particularly nanorods are actively exploited as imaging probes because of their special nonblinking and nonbleaching absorption, scattering and emitting properties that arise from the excitation of surface plasmons. Herein, we report a novel orientation sensor at nanoscale by defocused imaging of single Au nanorods (AuNRs) through an ordinary wide-field optical microscope. By simultaneously recording defocused images and two-photon luminescence intensities for a large number of single AuNRs, we correlate their defocused images with their three-dimensional spatial orientations. As many AuNRs can be monitored in parallel, defocused imaging of single AuNRs is a high throughput sensing technique that allows us to obtain their spatial orientations within one frame in situ and real-time. The probe size can be down to several nanometers, which is highly desirable in order to minimize any potential interference from the probe itself. Furthermore, the sensing property is insensitive to the excitation polarization and the distribution of the probe aspect ratio, which allows AuNRs of any length in a proper regime to be used as orientation sensors without changing the laser frequency and polarization. These unique features make the orientation probes proposed here outstanding candidates for optical imaging and sensing in material science and biology.