Optical signal-based improvement of individual nanoparticle tracking analysis

Abstract

AbstractNanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) provides a simple method to determine individual nanoparticle (NP) size. However, because size quantification is based on the slowly converging statistical law of random events, its intrinsic error is large, especially in the case of limited event numbers, e.g. for weak scattering NPs. Here, we introduce an NTA improvement by analyzing each individual NP trajectory while taking into account the other trajectories with a weighting coefficient. The weighting coefficient is directly derived from the optical signature of each particle measured by quantitative phase microscopy. Simulations and experimental results demonstrate the improvement in NTA accuracy, not only for mono-disperse but also for poly-disperse particle solutions.