Theoretical model for plasmonic photothermal response of gold nanostructures solutions

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical model combining the bioheat equation and Mie theory to predict the photothermal response of gold nanostructures in water, achieving good agreement with experiments and aiding future design.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive theoretical framework for accurately predicting the photothermal effects of gold nanostructures, including temperature elevation during laser illumination.

Findings

The model achieves qualitative and quantitative agreement with experimental data.

Proper calculation of absorption cross section is crucial for temperature prediction.

The approach is validated and discussed for its limitations.

Abstract

Photothermal effects of gold core-shell nanoparticles and nanorods dispersed in water are theoretically investigated using the transient bioheat equation and the extended Mie theory. Properly calculating the absorption cross section is an extremely crucial milestone to determine the elevation of solution temperature. The nanostructures are assumed to be randomly and uniformly distributed in the solution. Compared to previous experiments, our theoretical temperature increase during laser light illumination provides, in various systems, both reasonable qualitative and quantitative agreement. This approach can be a highly reliable tool to predict photothermal effects in experimentally unexplored structures. We also validate our approach and discuss its limitations.