Single gold nanorod detection using confocal light absorption and scattering spectroscopy

Gold nanorods have the potential to be employed as extremely bright molecular marker labels for fluorescence, absorption, or scattering imaging of living tissue. However, samples containing a large number of gold nanorods usually exhibit relatively wide spectral lines. This linewidth limits the use of the nanorods as effective molecular labels, since it would be rather difficult to image several types of nanorod markers simultaneously. In addition, the observed linewidth does not agree well with theoretical calculations, which predict significantly narrower absorption and scattering lines. The discrepancy could be explained by apparent broadening because of the contribution of nanorods with various sizes and aspect ratios. We measured native scattering spectra of single gold nanorods with the confocal light absorption and scattering spectroscopy system, and found that single gold nanorods have a narrow spectrum as predicted by the theory, which suggests that nanorod-based molecular markers with controlled narrow aspect ratios, and to a lesser degree size distributions, should provide spectral lines sufficiently narrow for effective biomedical imaging.