Light Shaping for Reconfigurable Microscale Temperature Control

Temperature is often a critical factor from physics to biology. Most existing techniques (e.g. ovens, incubators...) only provide global temperature control and incur strong inertia. Thermoplasmonic heating can give access to fast, local and contactless optical temperature control. However, tailoring temperature at the micro-scale is not straightforward since heat diffusion alters temperature patterns. In this study, we propose and demonstrate an accurate and reconfigurable microscale temperature shaping technique by precisely tailoring the illumination intensity that is sent on the sample. A homogeneous array of absorbing plasmonic nanoparticles is used to efficiently convert light into heat through thermoplasmonic effects.