All-dielectric thermonanophotonics

TL;DR

This paper reviews the emerging field of all-dielectric thermonanophotonics, which uses dielectric nanoparticles with resonant properties for controlled heat generation and has significant applications in medicine and nanochemistry.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of all-dielectric thermonanophotonics and discusses its thermally-induced processes, highlighting its rapid development and potential applications.

Findings

All-dielectric nanophotonics replaces thermoplasmonics for better control.

Resonant dielectric nanoparticles enable efficient nanoscale heating.

Applications include cancer therapy and nanochemistry.

Abstract

Nanophotonics is an important branch of modern optics dealing with light-matter interaction at the nanoscale. Nanoparticles can exhibit enhanced light absorption under illumination by light, and they become nanoscale sources of heat that can be precisely controlled and manipulated. For metal nanoparticles, such effects have been studied in the framework of $\textit{thermoplasmonics}$ which, similar to plasmonics itself, has a number of limitations. Recently emerged $\textit{all-dielectric resonant nanophotonics}$ is associated with optically-induced electric and magnetic Mie resonances, and this field is developing very rapidly in the last decade. As a result, thermoplasmonics is being replaced by $\textit{all-dielectric thermonanophotonics}$ with many important applications such as photothermal cancer therapy, drug and gene delivery, nanochemistry, and photothermal imaging. This review paper aims to introduce this new field of non-plasmonic nanophotonics and discuss associated thermally-induced processes at the nanoscale.