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Draft:Photoblinking

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  • Comment: ZERO SOURCES Ktkvtsh (talk) 19:46, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

In optics, photoblinking describes an observation that the light-emitting, light-reflecting, or light-absorption object switches between a bright state and a dim or dark state. This happens over time of interest in the observation window typically in a few seconds to munites. Photoblinking is different from photobleaching. Photobleaching is assigned when the object gets into a dark state permanently or longer than the observation window. In photoblinking, objects in the dark state will get back to a bright state and are expected to get back to a bright state after the time window of interest. This definition is particularly popular for single-molecule and single-particle photophysics studies.

Single-molecule photoblinking

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Single organic dyes or fluorescent proteins usually blink under a fluorescence microscope.

Single-particle photoblinking

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Quantum dots Photoblinking is a well-documented phenomenon in the early days of photoluminescence measurements.

Applications of photoblinking

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In many applications such as biosensing and light emitting diodes (LED), photoblinking is a non-preferred property because it reduces the brightness of the object. However, photoblinking is preferred and has been used in super-resolution microscopy to control the density of bright objects under a fluorescent microscope within a small area, typically to <<1 molecule/particle staying bright within the diffraction limit of the fluorescent microscope e.g. ~500 nm in diameter.