Polymer-based temperature sensors: Materials design, synthesis, characterization, and biomedical applications

Temperature is closely related to the life activities of the human body, especially at the cellular scale. A large number of biological reactions often take place in cells, including gene expression, enzyme interaction, and cell metabolism, accompanied by the release or absorption of heat. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the intracellular temperature in real time. Due to the excellent thermal stimulus-response ability and good biocompatibility of thermosensitive polymers, thermometers based on polymers have successfully achieved temperature detection at the cellular scale with high spatial resolution, which has attracted tremendous attention from researchers. In this paper, the design, synthesis strategy, and the ability of temperature imaging in cells of polymer-based thermometers are introduced in detail, which provides a good foundation for the future design of polymer-based thermometers and their biomedical applications.