Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 8, 2026

Utilization of Plasmonic and Photonic Crystal Nanostructures for Enhanced Micro- and Nanoparticle Manipulation
Published on: September 27, 2011
Photo-Induced Heating in Plasmonic Nanoparticles Trapped in Thermo-Sensitive Liquid Crystals
Abstract:
Thermo-sensitive liquid crystals may result, for some aspects, good host materials for plasmonic nanoparticles. In particular they are suitable to study and measure the temperature variations produced by photo-induced plasmonic joule effect in the metallic nanoparticles. Combining the properties of liquid crystals and metallic nanoparticles, allows to measure temperature variations in different ways by exploiting the optical properties of thermotropic liquid crystals: In a first attempt, by combining nematic liquid crystals and spherical metallic nanoparticles, we have predicted and measured temperature changes, under a suitable (resonant) optical illumination, by measuring the photo-thermal induced birefringence variation. In a different experiment, we have combined cholesteric liquid crystals and gold nanorods: Light-induced variations of structural colorations exhibited by cholesteric liquid crystals has been used as a new methodology to measure nanoscale heat variation with a very high sensitivity (0.03 K).
Related Concept Videos
Social Traps
Heating and Cooling Curves
For instance, the addition of heat raises the temperature of a solid; the amount of heat absorbed depends on the heat capacity of the solid (q = mcsolidΔT). According to thermochemistry, the relation between the amount of heat absorbed or released by a substance, q, and its...
Ionic Crystal Structures
Most monatomic ions behave as charged spheres, and their attraction for ions of opposite charge is the same in every direction. Consequently, stable structures for ionic compounds result (1) when ions of one charge are surrounded by as many ions as possible of the opposite...
Aqueous Solutions and Heats of Hydration
When ionic compounds dissolve in water, the ions in the solid separate and disperse uniformly throughout the solution because water molecules surround and solvate the ions, reducing the strong electrostatic forces between them. This process...
Specific Heat
For example, increasing the temperature of one gram of water by 1°C requires one calorie of heat energy and can be written as 1 cal/g-°C, or...
Quantifying Heat

