Theoretical study on the effect of temperature gradient on contact-free scanning for scanning ion conductance microscopy

Scanning ion-conductance microscopy (SICM) is a non-contact, high-resolution, and in-situ scanning probe microscope technique, it can be operated in probing the physical and chemical properties of biological samples such as living cells. Recently, using SICM to study the effects of microenvironment changes such as temperature changes on response of the biological samples has attracted significant attention. However, in this temperature gradient condition, one of the crucial but still unclear issues is the scanning feedback types and safe threshold. In this paper, a theoretical study of effect of the temperature gradient in electrolyte or sample surface on the SICM safe ion-current threshold is conducted using three-dimensional Poisson-Nernst-Planck, Navier-Stokes and energy equations. Two temperature gradient types, sample surface and two types of pipettes with different ratio of inner and outer radii are included, respectively. The results demonstrate that the local temperature of the electrolyte and then sample surface significantly affect the ion flow, shape of the approach curves and thus safe threshold in SICM pipette probe for contact-free scanning. There is a current-increased and decreased phases for approaching the surface with higher temperature and two current-decreased phases for surface with lower temperature. Based on this shape feature of approach curves, the change rate of current is analysis to illustrate the possibility for contact-free scanning of slope object. The results indicate that with the decrease of the normalized tip-surface distance, the coupling effect of large slope angle and local high temperature makes the increase in change rate of ion current not significant and then it challenging to realize contact-free scanning especially for higher surface temperature.