Photothermal manipulation of the fringing field in gold nanorod dimers towards the apoptosis of cancerous cells.

The possibility of coherent manipulation of optical and thermal energies in noble metal nanostructures has given birth to an enduring research arena coined by thermoplasmonics. Upon interaction with electromagnetic radiation, the energy of the produced hot electrons in metallic nanostructures is converted into heat and is transferred to the medium as a consequence of numerous relaxation processes. Gold nanorods have, often, been adopted as the classical anisotropic nanostructures owing to excellent shape-selective plasmonic tunability in the vis-NIR region.