Fluorescence near-field microscopy of DNA at sub-10 nm resolution

We demonstrate apertureless near-field microscopy of single molecules at sub-10 nm resolution. With a novel phase filter, near-field images of single organic fluorophores were obtained with approximately sixfold improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio. The improvement allowed pairs of molecules separated by approximately 15 nm to be reliably and repeatedly resolved, thus demonstrating the first true Rayleigh resolution test for near-field images of single molecules. The potential of this technique for biological applications was demonstrated with an experiment that measured the helical rise of A-form DNA.