Gold Nanoparticles as Absolute Nanothermometers.

Nanothermometry is a challenging field that can open the door to intriguing questions ranging from biology and medicine to material sciences. Gold nanorods are excellent candidates to act as nanoprobes because they are reasonably bright emitters upon excitation with a monochromatic source. Gold nanoparticles are commonly used in photothermal therapy as efficient transducers of electromagnetic radiation into heat.

Background Suppression in Imaging Gold Nanorods through Detection of Anti-Stokes Emission.

Metallic nanoparticles have opened the possibility of imaging, tracking, and manipulating biological samples without time limitations. Their low photoluminescence quantum yield, however, makes them hard to detect under high background conditions. In this study we show that it is possible to image gold nanorods by detecting their anti-Stokes emission under resonant excitation.

In situ tuning of gold nanorod plasmon through oxidative cyanide etching.

Single gold nanorods exhibit great opportunities for bio-sensing, enhanced spectroscopies and photothermal therapy. A key property of these particles is the surface plasmon resonance, that is strongly dependent on their shape. Methods for tuning this resonance after the synthesis of the particles are of great interest for many applications.

Influence of the glass transition on rotational dynamics of dyes in thin polymer films: single-molecule and ensemble experiments.

We performed polarized fluorescence emission studies of Nile Red (NR) in poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), poly(ethyl methacrylate) (PEMA), and poly(butyl methacrylate) (PBMA) at the single molecule (SM) and at the ensemble level to study the in cage movements of the ground-state molecule in polymer films of nanometric thickness at room temperature. Experiments were performed with wide field irradiation. At the ensemble level, the linearly polarized irradiation was used to induce a photoselection by bleaching, which is compensated by rotational diffusion.