Chemical
characterization at the nanoscale is of significant importance
for many applications in physics, analytical chemistry, material science,
and biology. Despite the intensive studies in the infrared range,
high-spatial-resolution and high-sensitivity imaging for compositional
identification in the visible range is rarely exploited. In this work,
we present a gap-plasmon-enhanced imaging approach based on photothermal-induced
resonance (PTIR) for nanoscale chemical identification. With this
approach, we experimentally obtained a high spatial resolution of
∼5 nm for rhodamine nanohill characterization and achieved
monolayer sensitivity for mapping the single-layer chlorophyll-a islands
with the thickness of only 1.9 nm. We also successfully characterized
amyloid fibrils stained with methylene blue dye, indicating that this
methodology can be also utilized for identification of the radiation-insensitive
macromolecules. We believe that our proposed high-performance visible
PTIR system can be used to broaden the applications of nanoscale chemical
identification ranging from nanomaterial to life science areas.