STED-microscopy using photonic integrated circuits

Optical nanoscopy provides fluorescent images with resolution down to the molecular scale, which facilitates new scientific discoveries in the life sciences. However, to-date it requires specialised complex and costly microscope setups with bulk optical components. If the generation and control of the required nanoscopy illumination patterns were miniaturized and transferred to photonic integrated chips (PIC) instead, super resolution could be obtained with simple and affordable standard fluorescence microscopes by using the PIC as sample holder. The main scientific objective of this project is therefore to proof the concept of chip-based stimulated emission depletion (STED) nanoscopy, which we will refer as c-STED. Developing STED nanoscopy on an integrated platform will further enable parallelization and high-speed super resolution imaging suitable for live cell bio-imaging. This proposed multi-disciplinary project requires a near unique set of expertise, which will be provided by joining the pioneering work on STED nanoscopy techniques at LLG (lead by Dr Egner) with the expertise on integrated optics, including the on-going ERC project on chip-based nanoscopy (lead by Dr Ahluwalia) at UiT Norway. The bilateral mobility grant will be used to develop a close collaboration between the University of Tromsø (UiT), Norway, and the Laser Laboratory Göttingen (LLG), Germany and to catalyse the proof-of-concept investigations of c-STED nanoscopy, which is being considered for a patent application. In addition, it will enable an intensive training of the involved PhD students in complementary research fields at the forefront of future nanoscopy techniques. The project results will strengthen the joint applications planned by collaborating PIs, under Horizon 2020 framework, such as ICT-Photonik (PIC-call due in April 2017) and H2020 FET-Open call (on-going application) and nationals proposals such as Nano2021 (Norway) and DFG (Germany).