Solvothermal synthesis, denoting chemical reactions occurring in metastable liquids above their boiling point, normally requires the use of a sealed autoclave under pressure to prevent the solvent from boiling. This work introduces an experimental approach that enables solvothermal synthesis at ambient pressure in an open reaction medium. The approach is based on the use of gold nanoparticles deposited on a glass substrate and acting as photothermal sources. To illustrate the approach, the selected hydrothermal reaction involves the formation of indium hydroxide microcrystals favored at 200 degrees C in liquid water. In addition to demonstrating the principle, the benefits and the specific characteristics of such an approach are investigated, in particular, the much faster reaction rate, the achievable spatial and time scales, the effect of microscale temperature gradients, the effect of the size of the heated area, and the effect of thermal-induced microscale fluid convection. This technique is general and could be used to spatially control the deposition of virtually any material for which a solvothermal synthesis exists

Laser heating of individual cells in culture recently led to seminal studies in cell poration, fusion, migration, or nanosurgery, although measuring the local temperature increase in such experiments remains a challenge. Here, the laser-induced dynamical control of the heat-shock response is demonstrated at the single cell level, enabled by the use of light-absorbing gold nanoparticles as nanosources of heat and a temperature mapping technique based on quadriwave lateral shearing interferometry (QLSI) measurements. As it is label-free, this approach does not suffer from artifacts inherent to previously reported fluorescence-based temperature-mapping techniques and enables the use of any standard fluorescent labels to monitor in parallel the cell's response.

Heating on the microscale using focused lasers gave rise to recent applications, e.g., in biomedicine, biology and microfluidics, especially using gold nanoparticles as efficient nanoabsorbers of light. However, such an approach naturally leads to nonuniform, Gaussian-like temperature distributions due to the diffusive nature of heat. Here, we report on an experimental means to generate arbitrary distributions of temperature profiles on the micrometric scale (e.g. uniform, linear, parabolic, etc) consisting in illuminating a uniform gold nanoparticle distribution on a planar substrate using spatially contrasted laser beams, shaped using a spatial light modulator (SLM). We explain how to compute the light pattern and the SLM interferogram to achieve the desired temperature distribution, and demonstrate the approach by carrying out temperature measurements using quantitative wavefront sensing.

Spatial light modulators have become an essential tool for advanced microscopy, enabling breakthroughs in 3D, phase, and super-resolution imaging. However, continuous spatial-light modulation that is capable of capturing sub-millisecond microscopic motion without diffraction artifacts and polarization dependence is challenging. Here we present a photothermal spatial light modulator (PT-SLM) enabling fast phase imaging for nanoscopic 3D reconstruction. The PT-SLM can generate a step-like wavefront change, free of diffraction artifacts, with a high transmittance and a modulation efficiency independent of light polarization. We achieve a phase-shift > π and a response time as short as 70 µs with a theoretical limit in the sub microsecond range. We used the PT-SLM to perform quantitative phase imaging of sub-diffractional species to decipher the 3D nanoscopic displacement of microtubules and study the trajectory of a diffusive microtubule-associated protein, providing insights into the mechanism of protein navigation through a complex microtubule network.

Thermophiles are microorganisms that thrive at high temperature. Studying them can provide valuable information on how life has adapted to extreme conditions. However, high temperature conditions are difficult to achieve on conventional optical microscopes. Some home-made solutions have been proposed, all based on local resistive electric heating, but no simple commercial solution exists. In this article, we introduce the concept of microscale laser heating over the field of view of a microscope to achieve high temperature for the study of thermophiles, while maintaining the user environment in soft conditions. Microscale heating with moderate laser intensities is achieved using a substrate covered with gold nanoparticles, as biocompatible, efficient light absorbers. The influences of possible microscale fluid convection, cell confinement and centrifugal thermophoretic motion are discussed. The method is demonstrated with two species: (i) Geobacillus stearothermophilus, a motile thermophilic bacterium thriving around 65 °C, which we observed to germinate, grow and swim upon microscale heating and (ii) Sulfolobus shibatae, a hyperthermophilic archaeon living at the optimal temperature of 80 °C. This work opens the path toward simple and safe observation of thermophilic microorganisms using current and accessible microscopy tools.

Interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT), as an ultrasensitive fluorescence-free imaging modality, has recently gained enormous attention and has been rapidly developing from demonstration of principle to quantitative sensing and bioanalytics. Here we report on a theoretical framework of multiscale modeling and analysis for iSCAT with samples of arbitrary shapes under any types of illumination and detection schemes. We theoretically predict and experimentally confirm different evolution behaviors of the interference contrast as a function of the axial defocusing for dielectric and metallic nanoparticles. We provide a transparent understanding of the origin of the interference phenomenon in terms of plane wave components and explain how the interference contrast changes with the size and material of the nanoprobe and the numerical aperture of the microscope objective. Moreover, we investigate a sample system mimicking a gold nanoparticle in a simplified cell environment and show the position-dependent and asymmetric point spread function of the nanoparticle.

Microtubules (MTs) are ubiquitous cytoskeletal biopolymers essential for diverse cellular processes. MTs consist of strictly ordered tubulin dimers arranged into hollow cylindrical filaments and are known to be optically anisotropic, which enables their direct observation in microscopes based on polarization contrast. However, there are no experimental data to quantify the relation between the momentary optical anisotropy of the MT and the immediate arrangement of proteins in the MT structure. In this work, we introduce polarization-sensitive microscopy based on interferometric detection of scattering to quantify the scattering anisotropy of single unlabeled MTs with high precision. Our data explain the structural origin of MT anisotropy with a marginal contribution of the intrinsic asymmetry of a single tubulin molecule. We monitor changes in the MT scattering resulting from the binding of tau proteins to single MTs with a resolution of several proteins per diffraction-limited spot. We associate the changes in the contrast as well as in the scattering anisotropy with the formation of a shell around the MT formed by densely packed tau proteins. Our experimental results match closely with the theoretical model of the MT and include quantitative details about the polarization-dependent interaction of light with biological matter.

Spatial light modulators have become an essential tool for advanced microscopy enabling breakthroughs in 3D, phase, or super-resolution imaging. However, continuous spatial-light modulation without diffraction artifacts, polarization dependence, and able to capture sub-ms microscopic motion is challenging. Here we present a photothermal spatial light modulator (PT-SLM) enabling the fast wavefront shaping free of diffraction artifacts, having a high transmissivity and modulation efficiency independent of light polarization. It is based on the microscopic heating of a thin layer of thermo-optic material confined between the photothermal heat-source and a transparent heatsink. We achieve a phase-shift > π with a response time as short as 70 µs with a theoretical limit in the sub-µs range. The combination of the PT-SLM with an interferometric scattering microscope (iSCAT) allowed us to perform quantitative phase imaging of sub-diffractional scatterers and decipher the 3D nanoscopic displacement of microtubules matching closely with control data from atomic force microscopy.