Molecular self-assembled (MSA) materials such as lipid membranes, collagen, and DNA are common in living organisms and their hierarchical organization is crucial to the ultimate function of many biological systems. To understand the structure-properties correlations of MSA, it is necessary to characterize the micro-level structures and to obtain the chemical information simultaneously. To address this challenge, we coupled polarization resolved collinear vibrational sum frequency generation spectroscopy, an interface and symmetry selective second order nonlinear optical technique, with a line scanning microscopy platform to create a line scanning VSFG hyperspectral microscope which characterizes different chemical environment with spatial fidelity. The microscope was applied to a biomimetic MSA comprised of β-cyclodextrin (β-CD), a cup shaped heptamer of glucose, and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), a common surfactant.
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