Thermometry at the nanoscale

abstract

Non-invasive precise thermometers working at the nanoscale with high spatial resolution, where the conventional methods are ineffective, have emerged over the last couple of years as a very active field of research. This has been strongly stimulated by the numerous challenging requests arising from nanotechnology and biomedicine. This critical review offers a general overview of recent examples of luminescent and non-luminescent thermometers working at nanometric scale. Luminescent thermometers encompass organic dyes, QDs and Ln(3+) ions as thermal probes, as well as more complex thermometric systems formed by polymer and organic-inorganic hybrid matrices encapsulating these emitting centres. Non-luminescent thermometers comprise of scanning thermal microscopy, nanolithography thermometry, carbon nanotube thermometry and biomaterials thermometry. Emphasis has been put on ratiometric examples reporting spatial resolution lower than 1 micron, as, for instance, intracellular thermometers based on organic dyes, thermoresponsive polymers, mesoporous silica NPs, QDs, and Ln(3+)-based up-converting NPs and beta-diketonate complexes. Finally, we discuss the challenges and opportunities in the development for highly sensitive ratiometric thermometers operating at the physiological temperature range with submicron spatial resolution.

keywords

SCANNING THERMAL MICROSCOPY; ATOMIC-FORCE MICROSCOPY; SINGLE LIVING CELLS; FLUORESCENT POLYMERIC THERMOMETER; SYNTHETIC RNA THERMOMETERS; CONTROLLED GENE-EXPRESSION; TEMPERATURE SENSOR FILMS; QUANTUM DOTS; CARBON NANOTUBES; INTRACELLULAR TEMPERATURE

subject category

Chemistry; Science & Technology - Other Topics; Materials Science; Physics

authors

Brites, CDS; Lima, PP; Silva, NJO; Millan, A; Amaral, VS; Palacio, F; Carlos, LD

our authors

acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal), COMPETE and FEDER programs (PEst-C/CTM/LA0011/2011 and PTDC/CTM/101324/2008) and Integrated Spanish-Portuguese Action PT2009-0131 for financial support. The work in Zaragoza has been supported by the grants MAT2007-61621 and CONSOLIDER CSD2007-00010 from the Ministry of Education. LDC acknowledges Nanobiotec-CAPES network for a grant, whereas as CDSB (SFRH/BD/38472/2007 grant), PPL (SFRH/BPD/34365/2006 grant) and NJOS (Ciencia 2008 program) thank FCT.

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