Real-time ratiometric optical nanoscale thermometry

TL;DR

This paper introduces a diamond-based optical nanoscale thermometry technique that offers unprecedented sensitivity and resolution for real-time temperature measurements at the nanoscale, applicable in various scientific and medical fields.

Contribution

The work presents a novel all-optical nanothermometry method using cohosted color centers in nanodiamonds with a parallel detection scheme, achieving superior sensitivity and resolution.

Findings

Demonstrated real-time temperature monitoring of microcircuits.

Achieved high sensitivity and resolution surpassing existing methods.

Validated performance in biological and electronic environments.

Abstract

All optical nanothermometry has become a powerful, noninvasive tool for measuring nanoscale temperatures in applications ranging from medicine to nanooptics and solid-state nanodevices. The key features of any candidate nanothermometer are sensitivity and resolution. Here, we demonstrate a real time, diamond based nanothermometry technique with sensitivity and resolution much larger than those of any existing all optical method. The distinct performance of our approach stems from two factors. First, temperature sensors nanodiamonds cohosting two Group IV colour centers engineered to emit spectrally separated Stokes and AntiStokes fluorescence signals under excitation by a single laser source. Second, a parallel detection scheme based on filtering optics and high sensitivity photon counters for fast readout. We demonstrate the performance of our method by monitoring temporal changes in the local temperature of a microcircuit and a MoTe2 field effect transistor. Our work lays the foundation for time resolved temperature monitoring and mapping of micro, nanoscale devices such as microfluidic channels, nanophotonic circuits, and nanoelectronic devices, as well as complex biological environments such as tissues and cells.