News Materials Science

Scientists make nanothermometer

By Jessica Gorman

- More than 2 years ago

Reading an old-fashioned mercury thermometer sometimes requires some squinting. But that’s nothing compared with what’s needed to read the newest temperature-measuring device.

TINY THERMOMETER. Liquid gallium expands within a carbon nanotube as the temperature increases (left to right). Gao and Bando/Nature

Yihua Gao and Yoshio Bando of the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, need a powerful electron microscope to read the new thermometer they’ve created.