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，该仪器能够使用原位荧光成像来表征电化学界面。我们目前的技术已经有10年的历史了。主要的升级是用能够实时成像低荧光信号的更灵敏得多的相机来取代数码相机。我们目前的设置需要10秒的曝光时间，以实现来自我们的改良金电极的最小信噪比。这段时间太长了，无法进行任何有用的动力学或动态测量。此外，这些长时间的曝光时间显著增加了背景，并限制了我们看到界面上由于电气变量变化而发生的任何变化的能力。所要求的数码相机的灵敏度是10-100倍，这允许更快的图像采集或测量潜在扰动期间荧光的较小变化。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件方面的实用性，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，与欧洲同事的两个蓬勃发展的合作也是如此，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.