A new approach to achieve coalescence and sintering of metallic nanoparticles at room temperature is presented. It was discovered that silver nanoparticles behave as soft particles when they come into contact with oppositely charged polyelectrolytes and undergo a spontaneous coalescence process, even without heating. Utilizing this finding in printing conductive patterns, which are composed of silver nanoparticles, enables achieving high conductivities even at room temperature. Due to the sintering of nanoparticles at room temperature, the formation of conductive patterns on plastic substrates and even on paper is made possible. The resulting high conductivity, 20% of that for bulk silver, enabled fabrication of various devices as demonstrated by inkjet printing of a plastic electroluminescent device.

Measuring temperature in cells and tissues remotely, with sufficient sensitivity, and in real time presents a new paradigm in engineering, chemistry and biology. Traditional sensors, such as contact thermometers, thermocouples, and electrodes, are too large to measure the temperature with subcellular resolution and are too invasive to measure the temperature in deep tissue. The new challenge requires novel approaches in designing biocompatible temperature sensors-nanothermometers-and innovative techniques for their measurements. In the last two decades, a variety of nanothermometers whose response reflected the thermal environment within a physiological temperature range have been identified as potential sensors. This review covers the principles and aspects of nanothermometer design driven by two emerging areas: single-cell thermogenesis and image guided thermal treatments. The review highlights the current trends in nanothermometry illustrated with recent representative examples.

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We have developed a new analytical method of evaluating activatable fluorescent probes for ROS detection using integrated fluorescence spectroelectrochemistry. Tafel formalism was applied to describe the process of the probes’ oxidation under electrochemical conditions and identify a novel parameter defined as the threshold oxidation potential. This potential can serve as an approximation to the equilibrium potential and can be utilized for determining the sensitivity of a probe to oxidation. Based upon the measured values of threshold potentials, the order of sensitivity towards oxidation among several mostly used probes was determined to be following (from highest to lowest): 2,7-dichlorodihydrofluorescein > dihydroethidium > dihydrorhodamine 123 > dihydrorhodamine 6G. The presented approach opens up a new direction in synthesizing and screening novel ROS probes with a well-defined sensitivity for in vitro and in vivo applications.

Temperature-responsive nanoparticles used in conjunction with hyperthermia promise to provide synergistic effects for increasing drug efficacy. We propose a near-infared (NIR) fluorescent system based on a upper critical solution temperature (UCST) polymer, ISP2, integrated with a NIR fluorescent dye HITC for in vivo tracking. The system forms a nanoparticle that increases its volume as temperature increases, similar to the expansion of a Hoberman sphere. The nanospheres nearly doubled in size, from 80 nm to 140 nm, during a temperature increase from 40°C to 60°C