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Updated: Feb 1, 2026

Design, Fabrication, and Experimental Characterization of Plasmonic Photoconductive Terahertz Emitters
Published on: July 8, 2013
Sharpening emitter localization in front of a tuned mirror
Hannah S Heil1, Benjamin Schreiber1, Ralph Götz2
11Rudolf Virchow Center, Research Center for Experimental Biomedicine, University of Würzburg, Josef-Schneider-Str.2, 97080 Würzburg, Germany.
Abstract:
Single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) aims for maximized precision and a high signal-to-noise ratio1. Both features can be provided by placing the emitter in front of a metal-dielectric nanocoating that acts as a tuned mirror2-4. Here, we demonstrate that a higher photon yield at a lower background on biocompatible metal-dielectric nanocoatings substantially improves SMLM performance and increases the localization precision by up to a factor of two. The resolution improvement relies solely on easy-to-fabricate nanocoatings on standard glass coverslips and is spectrally and spatially tunable by the layer design and wavelength, as experimentally demonstrated for dual-color SMLM in cells.
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