Fabrication and near-infrared photothermal conversion characteristics of Au nanoshells

In this letter, gold nanoshells with a size of similar to 20 nm were prepared by a wet-chemical synthesis method and the surface plasmon absorption band of gold was tuned from visible to near-infrared. The gold nanoshell hydrosol demonstrated excellent photothermal conversion property. The temperature of the hydrosol was increased to as high as 30 degrees C under exposure of an 808 nm coherent diode laser with a powder density of 5 W/cm(2). This kind of gold nanoshell hydrosol is promising for use in biomedicine through photothermal conversion. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.