Thermal bleaching in single fluorescent molecules under two-photon excitation regime

摘要

Single molecule spectroscopy often requires the immobilization of the molecules onto solid or quasi-solid substrates and the use of relatively high excitation intensity. We have studied the fluorescence emission of four common dyes used for bio-imaging studies, rhodamine 6g, fluorescein, pyrene and indo-1 at the single molecule level under two-photon excitation regime. We focus on two-photon excitation thermal effects on the stability of the single molecules, influencing the internal photo-dynamics and the total duration of the fluorescent emission. Single dye molecules, spread on a glass substrate by spin coating, show a constant fluorescence output till a sudden transition to a dark state. The bleaching time varies in the series pyrene, indo-1, fluorescein and rhodamine 6g from the fastest to the slowest one respectively, and has a gaussian distribution suggesting that bleaching is not due to photo-bleaching. These observations are interpreted as thermal bleaching where the temperature increase is induced by the two-photon excitation process and the thermal bleaching is correlated to the amount of absorbed power that is not re-irradiated as fluorescence.