# Size-Dependence of the photothermal response of a single metal nanosphere

## TL;DR

This study investigates how the size of single metal nanospheres affects their thermal response under continuous illumination, revealing non-monotonic temperature changes and differences between gold and silver nanoparticles.

## Contribution

It provides new insights into the size-dependent photothermal behavior of metal nanospheres, highlighting optimal sizes for heat generation and comparing gold and silver.

## Key findings

- Particle temperature varies non-monotonically with size.
- Silver nanoparticles are more efficient heat generators at small sizes.
- Results inform applications like photothermal therapy and catalysis.

## Abstract

We study the thermal response of a single spherical metal nanoparticle to continuous wave illumination as a function of its size. We show that the particle temperature increases non-monotonically as the particle size increases, indicating that the photo-thermal response can be optimized by tuning the particle size and illumination wavelength. We also compare the size-effect on the photo-thermal effects of gold and silver nanoparticles and find somewhat surprisingly that Ag NPs are more efficient heat generators only for sufficiently small sizes. These results have importance primarily for application such as plasmon-assisted photo-catalysis, photothermal cancer therapy, etc., and provide a first step toward the study of the size-dependence of the thermo-optic nonlinearity of metal nanospheres.