  We consider the quantum effects of bulk matter (scalars, spinors) in the
Randall-Sundrum AdS$_5$ brane-world at nonzero temperature. The thermodynamic
energy (modulus potential) is evaluated at low and high temperatures. This
potential has an extremum which could be a minimum in some cases (for example,
for a single fermion). That suggests a new dynamical mechanism to stabilize the
thermal AdS$_5$ brane-world. It is shown that the brane separation required to
solve the hierarchy scale problem may occur at a quite low temperature. A
natural generalization in terms of the AdS/CFT correspondence (through the
supergravity thermal contribution) is also possible.
