The most effective gold nanorod size for plasmonic photothermal therapy: theory and in vitro experiments.

The development of new and improved photothermal contrast agents for the successful treatment of cancer (or other diseases) via plasmonic photothermal therapy (PPTT) is a crucial part of the application of nanotechnology in medicine. Gold nanorods (AuNRs) have been found to be the most effective photothermal contrast agents, both in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, determining the optimum AuNR size needed for applications in PPTT is of great interest.

Hollow gold nanorectangles: the roles of polarization and substrate.

Dimers of hollow gold nanorectangles ((197 ± 4) × (134 ± 6) nm outside and (109 ± 5) × (53 ± 3) nm inside) were fabricated via electron beam lithography with interparticle separations ranging from 27 ± 2 nm to 596 ± 8 nm. Spectroscopic investigation of these arrays showed multiple peaks under illumination polarized both parallel and perpendicular to the interparticle axis. Discrete dipole approximation theoretical calculations were used to investigate the nature of these multiple peaks.

Surface assembly and plasmonic properties in strongly coupled segmented gold nanorods.

An assembly strategy is reported such that segmented nanorods fabricated through template-assisted methods can be robustly transferred and tethered to a pre-functionalized substrate with excellent uniformity over large surface areas. After embedding the rods, sacrificial nickel segments were selectively etched leaving behind strongly coupled segmented gold nanorods with gaps between rods below 40 nm and as small as 2 nm. Hyper-spectral imaging is utilized to measure Rayleigh scattering spectra from individual and coupled nanorod elements in contrast to common bulk measurements.

Pronounced effects of anisotropy on plasmonic properties of nanorings fabricated by electron beam lithography.

Gold nanoring dimers were fabricated via EBL with dimensions of 127.6 ± 2.5 and 57.