Application of the Luminescent Carbon Nanoparticles for Optical Diagnostics of Structure-Inhomogeneous Objects at the Micro- and Nanoscales

The paper offers a short review of the recent works associated with the use of luminescent carbon nanoparticles for the studies of structurally inhomogeneous optical fields carrying a diagnostic information on inhomogeneous material objects. Methods for obtaining nanoparticles with various specially assigned optical and electrical properties, necessary for research and diagnostic tasks, are analyzed. It is shown that the light-induced motion of nanoparticles suspended in the optical field enable detection and localization of the points of intensity minima and phase singularities. Optically-driven nanoparticles can serve as highly-sensitive probes of the object surface inhomogeneities, realizing a contactless version of the atomic-force profilometry. In many cases, the use of nanoparticles makes it possible to circumvent the spatial-resolution limitations of optical systems dictated by the classical wave-optics concepts (Rayleigh limit).