Limitations of Bulk Diamond Sensors for Single-Cell Thermometry

The present paper reports on a Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis of the experimental situation corresponding to the measurement of the temperature variation in a single cell plated on bulk diamond by means of optical techniques. Starting from previous experimental results, we have determined—in a uniform power density approximation and under steady-state conditions—the total heat power that has to be dissipated by a single cell plated on a glassy substrate in order to induce the typical maximum temperature increase ΔTglass=1 K. While keeping all of the other parameters constant, the glassy substrate has been replaced by a diamond plate. The FEM analysis shows that, in this case, the maximum temperature increase is expected at the diamond/cell interface and is as small as ΔTdiam=4.6×10−4 K. We have also calculated the typical decay time in the transient scenario, which resulted in τ≈ 250 μs. By comparing these results with the state-of-the-art sensitivity values, we prove that the potential advantages of a longer coherence time, better spectral properties, and the use of special field alignments do not justify the use of diamond substrates in their bulk form.