Low intensity focused ultrasound: a new prospect for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

As a chronic and progressive neurodegenerative disease, Parkinson's disease (PD) still lacks effective and safe targeted drug therapy. Low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU), a new method to stimulate the brain and open the blood-brain barrier (BBB), has been widely concerned by PD researchers due to its non-invasive characteristics. PubMed was searched for the past 10 years using the terms 'focused ultrasound', 'transcranial ultrasound', 'pulse ultrasound', and 'Parkinson's disease'.

High refractive index dielectric coating on plasmonic nanoantennas for strong visible light absorption in small transition metal nanoparticle reactors.

A more practical model for plasmonic core@shell-satellite antenna-reactor photocatalysts is promoted. In contrast to the mainstream view, total light absorption in the Pt nanoparticle (NP) reactors can be further improved by 70% after coating a 10-nm-thick high refractive index TiO shell on the large Ag antenna as a result of more Pt NPs undergoing high absorption enhancement. The enhancement effect is maximized at the electric quadrupole (EQ) resonance.

Burying small Pt nanoparticles in the TiO microsphere support to form visible light antenna-reactor photocatalysts.

By rational design and parameter engineering of the TiO-Pt core-satellite construction, visible light absorption in small Pt nanoparticles (NPs) can be enhanced by nearly 100 times. The TiO microsphere support works as the optical antenna, giving rise to superior performance compared to conventional plasmonic nanoantennas. A crucial step is to bury the Pt NPs completely in the high refractive index TiO microsphere, because light absorption in the Pt NP approximately scales with the fourth power of the refractive index of its surrounding media.

Reducing the loss of electric field enhancement for plasmonic core-shell nanoparticle dimers by high refractive index dielectric coating.

Plasmonic nanoparticle (NP) dimers, generating highly intense areas of electric field enhancement named hot spots, have been playing a vital role in various applications like surface enhanced Raman scattering. For stabilization and functionalization, such metallic NPs are often coated with dielectric shells, yet suffer from a rapid degeneration of the hot spot with the increase of the shell thickness. Herein, it is demonstrated that the use of appropriately high refractive dielectric coatings can greatly reduce the loss of local electric field enhancement, maintaining usable hot spots.