Combined far-field, near-field and topographic imaging of nano-engineered polyelectrolyte capsules

•Multimodal investigations of nano-engineered polyelectrolyte capsules (NPCs).•s-SNOM reveals NPC details not visible with diffraction limited techniques.•Correlation of optical and topographic data enables better understanding of NPCs.

Nano-engineered polyelectrolyte capsules (NPCs) were investigated using a multimodal approach based on Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy, scattering-type Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy. Our experiment demonstrates that correlating optical information collected with far-field and near-field techniques and topographic data collected with scanning probe variants holds significant potential for gaining new insights on the structure of NPCs assembled with layer-by-layer strategies.

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