] Last year Yihau Gao and Yoshio Bando at the National
] Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba found that the
] height of a column of liquid gallium in a nanotube varies
] linearly with temperature.

sounds like they need to find a way to read the thermometer easily (i.e. not requiring an SEM), but still neat.

nanotechweb.org - News - Nanothermometers feel the heat (October 2003)