Peter Zijlstra Group
We are happy that our ITN grant called SuperCol was awarded! This is an international training network funded by the European Union and is coördinated by Peter. The network will train a new generation of creative, entrepreneurial and innovative early-stage researchers. Several academic institutes and industrial partners across Europe will collaborate to train a new […]
Plasmon Rulers as a Probe for Real-Time Microsecond Conformational Dynamics of Single Molecules Emiel W.A. Visser, Matěj Horáček, and Peter Zijlstra DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b03860 Biopolymers such as DNA, RNA and proteins exploit conformational changes to modulate their function. Although state-of-the-art single-molecule approaches enable identification of conformational states, the transition path and metastable intermediates often remain elusive […]
Plasmon-Enhanced Single-Molecule Enzymology Yuyang Wang and Peter Zijlstra DOI:10.1021/acsphotonics.8b00327 We present a numerical study on plasmon-enhanced single-molecule enzymology. We combine Brownian dynamics and electromagnetic simulations to calculate the enhancement of fluorescence signals of fluorogenic substrate converted by an enzyme conjugated to a plasmonic particle. We simulate the Brownian motion of a fluorescent product away from the active […]
The Europtrode XIV in 2018 was held on 25-28th March in Naples, Italy. Rachel’s talk on plasmonic biosensors won The Paper Award. Congratulations to Rachel! The Best Paper Award is given to the best presentation (poster, oral, or invited speaker presentation) as voted by the conference attendees. It is sponsored by the journal Sensors.
Spatially Resolved Sensitivity of Single-Particle Plasmon Sensors Michael A. Beuwer, Bas van Hoof, and Peter Zijlstra DOI:10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b00849 The high sensitivity of localized surface plasmon resonance sensors to the local refractive index allows for the detection of single-molecule binding events. Though binding events of single objects can be detected by their induced plasmon shift, the broad […]
All-Optical Imaging of Gold Nanoparticle Geometry Using Super-Resolution Microscopy Adam Taylor, Rene Verhoef, Michael Beuwer, Yuyang Wang, and Peter Zijlstra DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.7b12473 We demonstrate the all-optical reconstruction of gold nanoparticle geometry using super-resolution microscopy. We employ DNA-PAINT to get exquisite control over the (un)binding kinetics by the number of complementary bases and salt concentration, leading […]
Heterogeneous kinetics in the functionalization of single plasmonic nanoparticles Matej Horacek, Rachel E. Armstrong, and Peter Zijlstra DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.7b04027 The functionalization of gold nanoparticles with DNA has been studied extensively in solution, however these ensemble measurements do not reveal particle-to-particle differences. Here we study the functionalization of gold nanorods with thiolated single stranded DNA (ssDNA) at the single-particle […]
Single-Molecule Plasmon Sensing: Current Status and Future Prospects Adam B. Taylor and Peter Zijlstra ACS Sensors 2(8), 1103-1122 (2017) Single-molecule detection has long relied on fluorescent labeling with high quantum-yield fluorophores. Plasmon-enhanced detection circumvents the need for labeling by allowing direct optical detection of weakly emitting and completely nonfluorescent species. This review focuses on […]
Tip-Specific Functionalization of Gold Nanorods for Plasmonic Biosensing: Effect of Linker Chain Length Pedro M. R. Paulo, Peter Zijlstra, Michel Orrit, Emilio Garcia-Fernandez, Tamara C. S. Pace, Ana S. Viana, and Sílvia M. B. Costa Langmuir, 2017, 33 (26), pp 6503–6510 Gold nanorods are promising platforms for label-free biosensing. We have functionalized gold nanorods with biotin thiol linkers of increasing chain length and evaluated […]