Liquid crystal thermography. A method for monitoring temperature gradients in microtitration plates

Precise quantitative heat transfer information in microtitration plates can be obtained by filling the wells of a microtitration plate with cholesteric liquid crystals and incubating the plates at the desired temperature in different incubators. The liquid crystals indicate temperature by changes in discrete reproducible colors over various temperature ranges. With these instrumented plates, interwell thermal gradients may be documented visually and are in close agreement with results obtained by using wire thermocouple measuring techniques.