Temperature imaging of water in a microchannel using thermal sensitivity of near-infrared absorption

This paper presents a remote and preparation-free method of temperature imaging of aqueous solutions in microchannels of microfluidic chips. The principle of this method is based on the temperature dependency of the near-infrared (NIR) absorption band (ν(2) + ν(3) band) of water. Temperature images were constructed from absorbances in a narrow wavelength range including 1908 nm, the most sensitive to temperature in the band, measured by using an NIR camera and an optical narrow-bandpass filter. Calculation and calibration results demonstrated a linear relationship between the absorption coefficient and temperature with a temperature coefficient of 1.5 × 10(-2) K(-1) mm(-1). Temperature images of 50 μm thick water in a Y-shaped PDMS microchannel locally heated by a neighboring hot wire were obtained, in which thermal diffusion processes in the microchip were visualized. Temperature resolution was estimated to be approximately 0.2 K according to the temperature coefficient and noise level.