Optical Antenna Based Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy of Biomembranes

The spatiotemporal architecture of the cell membrane and diffusion dynamics of its constituents (lipids and proteins) are critical for many cellular processes such as signaling, trafficking and cell adhesions. Sub-diffraction photonics based on plasmonics offer new opportunities to follow such events as they can confine electric fields in nanoscale hotspots with spatial dimensions comparable to single molecules (~5 nm).