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Temperature Detection in Individual Brown Adipocytes with Nitrogen‐Vacancy Ensemble in Diamond

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2025-03-20
JournalAdvanced Quantum Technologies
AuthorsP. H. Li, Xin Li, Xiaojiang Wang, Zhuowen Chen, Huanfei Wen
InstitutionsNorth University of China

Abstract Brown adipocytes participate in regulating body temperature through heat production, and temperature measurement is essential for understanding their thermogenesis mechanism. Although many advanced techniques have been proposed, achieving non‐invasive temperature detection at the single‐cell level still presents significant challenges. Here, a method is developed to measure the extracellular temperature of cultured brown adipocytes using nitrogen‐vacancy ensemble in diamond. The measurement principle is based on the resonance frequency of nitrogen‐vacancy centers changing with temperature when heat flows into the diamond integrated with nitrogen‐vacancy ensemble. This method enables precise imaging the temperature distribution differences on individual cell surfaces with a temperature sensitivity of 35 mK Hz −1/2 . With this method, a temperature increase of over 0.5 °C is observed in brown adipocytes stimulated by mitochondrial uncoupling agents. This result demonstrates that NV ensemble is a promising tool for studying thermogenesis in brown adipocytes and provides new research approaches for non‐invasive cell temperature measurements.