Breakthrough! German and UK Teams Develop Microscope with Superior Resolution

TapTechNews August 12th news, a research team from the University of Göttingen in Germany and the University of Oxford in the UK, in conjunction with the University of Göttingen Medical Center, has successfully developed a microscope with a resolution better than 5 nanometers. This breakthrough achievement will bring significant changes to life science research.

Researchers said that the resolution of the new microscope is equivalent to one ten-thousandth of a human hair (about 0.00004 inches), which is sufficient to reveal the tiniest structures within cells and provide more abundant and detailed information. Previously, due to the resolution of standard microscopes being only about 200 nanometers, researchers could only obtain fragmented images of cellular structures. For example, the distance between the microtubule structure within human cells and the connection between nerve cells is only 10 to 50 nanometers, far below the observation limit of traditional microscopes.

The working principle of this microscope is based on single-molecule localization microscopy technology, by accurately determining the position of individual fluorescent molecules to reconstruct the entire sample structure. As TapTechNews understands, the resolution of this technology was previously about 10 to 20 nanometers. And the team of Professor Jörg Enderlein from the Department of Physics at the University of Göttingen further doubled the resolution through high-sensitivity detectors and special data analysis, reaching an astonishing level of less than 5 nanometers.

Professor Enderlein said that this new technology is an important milestone in the field of high-resolution microscopy. Not only does it have extremely high resolution, but it is also cost-effective and easy to operate. The research team has also developed open-source data processing software, which will promote the wide application of this technology.

The relevant research results have been published in the journal Nature Photonics. This breakthrough technology is expected to provide a powerful tool for scientists to deeply explore the mysteries of life in fields such as cell biology and neuroscience.