Upgrades for increased sensitivity for in-situ fluorescence imaging of electrochemical interfaces

这笔资金将用于升级一种独特的仪器，该仪器能够利用原位荧光成像表征电化学界面。我们现在的技术已经有10年的历史了。主要的升级是用更灵敏的相机取代数码相机，能够实时成像低荧光信号。我们目前的设置需要10秒的曝光时间才能从我们改良的金电极中获得最小的信号噪声。这个时间太长，无法进行任何有用的动力学或动力学测量。此外，这些长曝光时间大大增加了背景，并限制了我们看到由于电变量变化而导致的界面变化的能力。要求的数码相机灵敏度提高10-100倍，以便在潜在扰动期间更快地获取图像或测量荧光的较小变化。我们已经证明了我们独特的方法在研究这些生物传感器表面的基本构建块方面的实用性，但进一步的研究需要显著提高检测灵敏度。三名研究生依赖于这次升级，还有两项与欧洲同事的新兴合作，他们希望学习和复制我们的方法。

This funding will be used to upgrade a unique instrument which is able to characterize electrochemical interfaces using in-situ fluorescence imaging. Our current technology is 10 years old. The main upgrade is to replace a digital camera with a significantly more sensitive camera capable of real time imaging of low fluorescence signals. Our current setup requires an exposure time of 10 sec to achieve a minimal signal to noise from our modified gold electrodes. This time is much too long for any useful kinetic or dynamic measurements to be made. In addition, these long exposure times increase the background significantly and limits our ability to see any changes in the interface due to changes in the electrical variable. The digital camera requested is 10-100 x more sensitive which allows for faster image acquisition or measurement of smaller changes in the fluorescence during potential perturbation. We have demonstrated the utility of our unique approach to studying these basic building blocks for biosensor surfaces, but further studies need significantly enhanced detection sensitivity. Three graduate students are dependent on this upgrade as are two burgeoning collaborations with European colleagues wanting to learn and duplicate our approach.