Hydrodynamic thermal confinement: creating thermo-chemical microenvironments on surfaces

We present a new, general concept termed Hydrodynamic Thermal Confinement (HTC), and its implementation for the creation of microscale dynamic thermo-chemical microenvironments on biological surfaces. HTC is based on a scanning probe and operates under physiological conditions. The temperature can be regulated between 30 degrees and 80 degrees C with +/- 0.2 degrees C precision and temperature ramps of 5 degrees C s(-1) over a footprint of similar to 50 mu m x 80 mu m in a volume of similar to 50 x 80 x 15 mu m(3) (similar to 50 pl).