A strategy to probe air-liquid interfaces by confocal fluorescence microscopy

Abstract

Confocal fluorescence microscopy has been seldom applied to air-liquid interfaces due to technical difficulties. Satellite lines of an excitation laser beam can be used as an inherent reference for a confocal microscope to align and calibrate the setup. This strategy is especially useful and important to a liquid surface, and makes it possible to observe very weak fluorescence without time-consuming alignment procedures.