Thermistor based nano-needle for single cell thermal characterization

Abstract

Cell's intracellular temperature has shown to have a vital role in controlling a cell's conditions, properties, activities, and the cell response towards external stimuli. Yet, Current conventional methods are not able to give accurate or any measurements when spatial resolution decreases to a micro scale. Many researches from different field are trying to develop ways that give high accuracy and high temperature sensitivity. We present here a Nano-needle microfluidic system for single cell temperature measurement; however, here we discussed the optimization using finite element approach of the sensor design using tungsten as the electrodes, and semiconducting metal oxide Co3O4 as the sensing material. The dimension of the sensor that gave the highest voltage thus highest sensitivity were ratio 1:4 of element diameter/electrode cross sectional area, a gap of 450nm between electrodes and a penetration depth of 0.25 in electrode 0.25nm. Furthermore, Voltage response gave results to measure a 0.1°C.