title: Nanomembrane-Based, Thermal-Transport Biosensor for Living Cells.
abstract: Knowledge of materials' thermal-transport properties, conductivity and diffusivity, is crucial for several applications within areas of biology, material science and engineering. Specifically, a microsized, flexible, biologically integrated thermal transport sensor is beneficial to a plethora of applications, ranging across plants physiological ecology and thermal imaging and treatment of cancerous cells, to thermal dissipation in flexible semiconductors and thermoelectrics. Living cells pose extra challenges, due to their small volumes and irregular curvilinear shapes. Here a novel approach of simultaneously measuring thermal conductivity and diffusivity of different materials and its applicability to single cells is demonstrated. This technique is based on increasing phonon-boundary-scattering rate in nanomembranes, having extremely low flexural rigidities, to induce a considerable spectral dependence of the bandgap-emission over excitation-laser intensity. It is demonstrated that once in contact with organic or inorganic materials, the nanomembranes' emission spectrally shift based on the material's thermal diffusivity and conductivity. This NM-based technique is further applied to differentiate between different types and subtypes of cancer cells, based on their thermal-transport properties. It is anticipated that this novel technique to enable an efficient single-cell thermal targeting, allow better modeling of cellular thermal distribution and enable novel diagnostic techniques based on variations of single-cell thermal-transport properties.
authors.affiliation: Photonics Laboratory, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Rami T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: ElAfandy
authors.affiliation: Division of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Ayman F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: AbuElela
authors.affiliation: Photonics Laboratory, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Pawan
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mishra
authors.affiliation: Photonics Laboratory, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Bilal
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Janjua
authors.affiliation: Photonics Laboratory, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Hassan M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Oubei
authors.affiliation: Microfluidics Core Lab, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Büttner
authors.affiliation: Photonics Laboratory, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Mohammed A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Majid
authors.affiliation: Photonics Laboratory, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Tien Khee
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Ng
authors.affiliation: Division of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Jasmeen S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Merzaban
authors.affiliation: Photonics Laboratory, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Boon S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Ooi
mesh_terms: D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D002470:Cell Survival; D006801:Humans; D008163:Luminescent Measurements; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D008567:Membranes, Artificial
keywords: cancer cells; gallium nitride; nanomembranes; thermal biosensors; thermal conductivity; thermal diffusivity