Fluorescence microscope for particle-tracking microrheology

这是一个购买荧光显微镜的建议，将用于研究复杂流体的小尺度结构。要研究的材料和现象包括粘土悬浮液中结构的形成，因为它们经历了从液体到凝胶的转变，以及在多孔凝胶中的扩散，这可能会在合成心脏瓣膜中找到应用。我们将使用这种显微镜来跟踪悬浮在材料中的小荧光球的扩散。悬浮颗粒由仪器中的光源以一个波长照射，并由显微镜以不同的波长成像，该波长是所使用的荧光染料的特征。将使用粒子跟踪软件从存储图像序列中获得粒子轨迹。材料中的结构限制了粒子的运动，对单个粒子的轨迹和粒子对运动之间的相关性的分析提供了关于该结构的信息。

This is a proposal to purchase a fluorescence microscope that will be used to study the small-scale structure of complex fluids. The materials and phenomena to be studied include the formation of structure in clay suspensions as they undergo a transition from liquid to gel, and diffusion in porous gels which may find application in synthetic heart valves. We will use this microscope to track the diffusion of small fluorescent spheres suspended in the materials. The suspended particles are illuminated at one wavelength by a light source in the instrument, and imaged by the microscope at a different wavelength which is characteristic of the fluorescent dye being used. The particle trajectories will be obtained from sequences of stored images using particle-tracking software. The structure in the material restricts the motion of the particles, and analysis of the trajectories of individual particles and of correlations between the motions of pairs of particles provides information about that structure.