Deterministic temperature shaping using plasmonic nanoparticle assemblies.

We introduce a deterministic procedure, named TSUNA for Temperature Shaping Using Nanoparticle Assemblies, aimed at generating arbitrary temperature distributions on the microscale. The strategy consists in (i) using an inversion algorithm to determine the exact heat source density necessary to create a desired temperature distribution and (ii) reproducing experimentally this calculated heat source density using smart assemblies of lithographic metal nanoparticles under illumination at their plasmonic resonance wavelength. The feasibility of this approach was demonstrated experimentally by thermal microscopy based on wavefront sensing.