Abstract

STED (stimulated emission depletion) nanoscopy[1, 2] has proven to provide even sub-10 nm resolution[3] in far field fluorescence microscopy and has found ample applications in biology or materials science. Similar to the development two-photon lithography[4] out of the concept of two-photon microscopy, it was proposed already in the very first reports on STED nanoscopy that the confined effective excitation volume can be used to spatially define chemical reactions on the nanometre scale.[1, 2] STED-inspired diffraction-unlimited lithography has been experimentally verified recently.[5-7]

© 2013 IEEE