Segmentacion De Mercado

Products of Chemistry
Luminescent Molecular Thermometers

edited by
George B. Kauffman
California State University
Fresno, CA 93740

Seiichi Uchiyama* and A. Prasanna de Silva
School ofChemistry, Queen's University, Belfast BT9 SAG, Northern Ireland: *S.Uchiyama@qub.ac.uk
Kaoru Iwai
Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Nara Women's University, Kitauoya-Nishimachi, Nara630-8506, Japan

Temperature is one of the most important factors that affects our daily lives. Everyone can recognize the arrival of spring by feeling the warmth in the air. Every chef pays at-tention tothe temperature of a. frying pan and an oven. In science, all phenomena, for example, chemical reactions or color of a star, are influenced by temperature. Therefore meth-ods for measuringtemperature remain in vogue. Until now, various types of thermometers have been developed, such as liquid-filled bulbs and stems (alcohol and mercury thermom-eters), bimetal strips, metallic resistors,thermistors, thermo-electric devices (thermocouples), and infrared radiation detectors (thermography) (1).
A molecule that responds to heat and sends the infor-mation about temperature in .the form of alight signal (e.g., fluorescence) is called a luminescent molecular thermometer (LMT). Such a "smart" molecule is able to function as a mo-lecular-level diermometer (2, 3) in the scientific world. LMTshave a great advantage over other thermometers in measuring temperatures in a small space (with dimensions of < 1C since the fluorescence detection is highly sensitive and enables

us to observe evenone molecule (with a size of-TO"5 m) (4). To measure two- or three-dimensional temperature distribu-tion in space and to obtain the time sequence of tempera-ture in a dewdrop, a living cell, amicrofluidic channel, or a microreactor are a few of the goals in the application of LMTs. All of these places are too small for macroscopic thermom-eters but large enough to accommodate the smart...