You do not have JavaScript enabled. Please enable JavaScript to access the full features of the site or access our non-JavaScript page.

Thermometry at the nanoscale

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Physics, CICECO, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810–193 Aveiro, Portugal
E-mail: carlos.brites@ua.pt, patriciapereira@ua.pt, nunojoao@ua.pt, vamaral@ua.pt, lcarlos@ua.pt
Fax: +351 234 378197
Tel: +351 234 370946

b Departamento de Fisica de la Materia Condensada, Facultad de Ciencias and Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón, CSIC–Universidad de Zaragoza, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain
E-mail: amillan@unizar.es, palacio@unizar.es

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 Ln3+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 Ln3+-based up-converting NPs and β-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.

Graphical abstract: Thermometry at the nanoscale
You have access to this article
Please wait while we load your content... Something went wrong. Try again?

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
19 Mar 2012
Accepted
26 Apr 2012
First published
01 May 2012

Nanoscale, 2012,4, 4799-4829

Thermometry at the nanoscale

C. D. S. Brites, P. P. Lima, N. J. O. Silva, A. Millán, V. S. Amaral, F. Palacio and L. D. Carlos, Nanoscale, 2012, 4, 4799 DOI: 10.1039/C2NR30663H

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements