On around August 2009, during a late-night brain-storm session with my colleague Erik Garbacik, I came up with the idea for my MSc project at the University of Twente: STED microscopy with a single laser wavelength. A few months later, a patent surfaced by Stephen Baer which basically said exactly the same thing as my MSc project proposal did. However, Baer didn't have any experimental proof in his patent, and so I figured I would go ahead and be the first to get results in the form of a Master's thesis.
Since I finished my MSc, a few more papers have surfaced (one by Baer: still no experimental proof!) and a few more from research groups in France and Italy that experimentally demonstrated the concept.
I am very curious to see what happens to the single wavelength STED microscope, especially whether or not it will indeed be used to make scientific discoveries about biology on the nanoscale. If you have any updates I'd be happy to hear them!
