Standing wave coherent Rayleigh backscattering enabled large-scale uniform zero-mode waveguides array

Zero-mode waveguide (ZMW) nanohole enables single molecule detection via zeptoliter-scale confinement, yet excitation-induced fluctuations in fluorescence intensity hinder throughput improvement. Here, we develop a structured illumination method combining waveguide standing-wave fields with nanohole optics to homogenize intensity distribution over a large scale. Simulation results present that a nanohole array illuminated by a standing-wave evanescent field experiences coherent Rayleigh backscattering and re-distributes the exponentially decayed intensity along the waveguide path. Together with the nanohole's contour-determined optical characteristic, this produces a uniform intensity profile up to 6%, similar to free-space flat-field illumination of quantitative microscopy. This approach overcomes the limit imposed by high loss and has the potential in developing high-throughput on-chip single-molecule detection devices.