GoldUp

Under illumination at their plasmonic resonance, metallic nanoparticles can behave as nanosources of heat, remotely controllable by light. This concept, which is the basis of the research field of thermoplasmonics, enables various applications in physics, chemistry and biology at small scales. The GoldUp project aims at developing a new type of thermoplasmonic substrates for microscopy, which consist of a deposit of plasmonic nanoparticles and temperature nanosensors covering a glass coverslip and embedded in a silica layer. In the first part of the project, the plasmonic nanoparticles and thermosensitives nanoparticles (fluorescent molecules, lanthanide nanoparticles) will be chemically synthesised and incorporated into a silica layer also chemically fabricated, by a sol-gel process. In a second part of the project, the samples thus produced will be characterised by optical microscopy, using quantitative phase microscopy and fluorescence microscopy techniques, and the results will be interpreted by numerical simulations. Emphasis will be placed on the high temperature range (100 - 200°C). In a final section, the usefulness and versatility of these samples will be illustrated by two applications in biology and physics: the possibility of making hyperthermophilic micro-organisms live at >100°C under a microscope, and the study of the physics of bubbles nucleation at small scales.