Inherently stealthy and highly tumor-selective gold nanoraspberries for photothermal cancer therapy.

Owing to their unique optical properties such as large absorption and scattering cross section and large enhancement of electromagnetic field at the surface, plasmonic nanostructures have received extensive attention as a highly promising class of materials for nano-oncology. Most of the existing plasmonic nanostructures require extensive post-synthesis treatments and biofunctionalization routines to mitigate their cytotoxicity and/or make them tumor-specific. Here, we report one-pot synthesis of a novel class of plasmonic nanostructures, namely, gold nanoraspberries (GRBs) with tunable size and localized surface plasmon resonance by using a naturally abundant polysaccharide, chitosan, which acts as a template and capping agent.

Probing distance-dependent plasmon-enhanced near-infrared fluorescence using polyelectrolyte multilayers as dielectric spacers.

Owing to their applications in biodetection and molecular bioimaging, near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent dyes are being extensively investigated. Most of the existing NIR dyes exhibit poor quantum yield, which hinders their translation to preclinical and clinical settings. Plasmonic nanostructures are known to act as tiny antennae for efficiently focusing the electromagnetic field into nanoscale volumes.

Multifunctional plasmonic nanorattles for spectrum-guided locoregional therapy.

Locoregional death of cancer cells (in vitro) is induced by ablation of plasmonic nanorattles combined with triggered release of a chemotherapeutic drug from the nanorattles. Completion of the therapy process is indicated by a "Raman signal flip" between the two reporters of the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) probe. The nanorattles enable targeted delivery of payload and simultaneous monitoring of the payload release and the therapy process.

Bimetallic Janus nanostructures via programmed shell growth.

We report the synthesis of compositionally asymmetric, core-Janus shell plasmonic nanostructures comprised of Au and Ag. Kinetic control was employed to achieve asymmetric shell growth on Au nanoparticles acting as cores. Subsequent differential surface functionalization of these nanostructures enabled programmed shell growth resulting in core-Janus shell nanostructures.