Ultra-sensitive temperature sensing and calorimetry

#The present application is a 371 national stage application of PCT/US2008/000580, which claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) of U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 60/885,025 filed Jan. 16, 2007.

#The present invention relates generally to temperature sensing, and more specifically to sensing temperature changes associated with chemical reactions via surface plasmon-enhanced radiation.

#Detecting and characterizing the thermodynamics of a chemical reaction provides insight into the mechanism by which the chemical reaction occurs. For example, the detection and characterization of binding interactions (e.g., protein-protein interactions, proteins-DNA, drug-protein interactions) are central to basic biological research and pharmaceutical research and development (R&D). Many, analytical techniques have been developed to study various types and aspects of binding interactions. Some examples of these techniques include Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay (ELISA), mass spectrometry, fluorescence resonance energy transfer, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, fluorescence anisotropy, protein arrays, nucleic acid microarrays, and calorimetry. Calorimetry is a particularly advantageous method used to study the thermodynamics of binding interactions. Calorimetry measures the energy released or absorbed by a reaction over a range of reactant concentrations, and uses this information to determine the thermodynamic properties, stoichiometry, and equilibrium binding constant for the reaction.

#The accompanying drawings are not intended to be drawn to scale. In the drawings, each identical or nearly identical component that is illustrated in various figures is represented by a like numeral. For purposes of clarity, not every component may be labeled in every drawing. In the drawings:

#FIG. 1 is a schematic representation of a calorimetry process.

#FIGS. 2a and 2b illustrate respective top and cross-sectional side views of a prior art nanohole array.

#The present disclosure generally relates to inventive methods and apparatus for temperature sensing. In some embodiments disclosed herein, of interest are methods and apparatus for sensing temperature changes associated with a chemical reaction, so as to determine the thermodynamic characteristics of the reaction. Additionally, some embodiments, relate to methods and apparatus for facilitating a hyperbolic heat transfer process, as well as reducing heat losses by other means of heat transfer (such as by a Fourier heat transfer process).

#Various aspects and embodiments of the present invention are described in further detail below, including certain embodiments relating particularly to temperature sensing associated with chemical reactions and calorimetry. It should be appreciated, however, that the present invention is not limited to any particular manner of implementation, and that the various embodiments discussed explicitly herein are provided primarily for purposes of illustration. The various concepts discussed herein may be suitably implemented for a variety of applications, including, but not limited to, nanoscale to microscale calorimetry for pharmaceutical and biotechnology products, combustion sensing, explosive detection, and biotoxin monitoring, as well as other applications that rely on measuring appreciably small temperature changes.

#One illustrative embodiment of the invention relates to a temperature sensing apparatus based in part on an apparatus for generating surface plasmon-enhanced radiation (SPER), as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,318,907 to Stark et al., the entirety of which is incorporated by reference herein. To facilitate a discussion of this illustrative embodiment, some relevant aspects of Stark et al.'s SPER apparatus are discussed immediately below. However, it should be appreciated that various inventive methods and apparatus according to the present invention merely rely on some of the concepts disclosed in Stark et al. as a point of departure, and that these methods and apparatus significantly modify the functionality and structure of Stark et al. for the purposes of achieving ultra-sensitive temperature sensing.