A new approach to understand the time-dependent temperature increasing process of gold-silica core-shell nanoparticles injected into chicken tissues under near-infrared laser irradiation is proposed. Gold nanoshells strongly absorb near-infrared radiations and efficiently transform absorbed energy into heat. Temperature rise given by experiments and numerical calculations based on bioheat transfer are in good agreement. Our work improves the analysis of a recent study [Richardson et al., Nano Lett. 2009, 9, 1139 by including effects of the medium perfusion on temperature increase. The theoretical analysis can also be used to estimate the distribution of nanoparticles in experimental samples and provide a relative accuracy prediction for the temperature profile of new systems. This

Laser effects have been obtained with dye-doped hybrid xerogel samples prepared several years ago and stored in different "classical" conditions. Firstly, using the same configuration of the laser cavity as was used 4-5 years ago, we have obtained almost identical laser performances, and slope conversion efficiencies were measured up to 80% and operational lifetimes, with 1-mJ initial output energy and 10-Hz repetition rate of several hundred thousand pulses obtained. Secondly, we have introduced the new pyrromethene 605 dye into a hybrid xerogel matrix and obtained good laser performances similar to the rest of the pyrromethene family.

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We investigate the chemo-photothermal effects of gold nanorods (GNRs) coated using mesoporous silica (mSiO 2 ) loading doxorubicin (DOX). When the mesoporous silica layer is embedded by doxorubicin drugs, a significant change in absorption spectra enables to quantify the drug loading. We carried out photothermal experiments on saline and livers of mice having GNRs@mSiO 2 and GNRs@mSiO 2 -DOX. We also injected the gold nanostructures into many tumor-implanted mice and used laser illumination on some of them. By measuring the weight and size of tumors, the distinct efficiency of photothermal therapy and chemotherapy on treatment is determined. We experimentally confirm the accumulation of gold nanostructures in the liver.

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The absorption spectra of dye-doped polymer thin films made from a variety of five dyes and six matrices, either organic or organomineral, are analyzed to evaluate the residual absorption in the red wavelength tail and in particular at amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) wavelengths. An absorption cutoff wavelength is defined as the extrapolated wavelength at which the absorption losses are expected to become negligible compared to the structure losses. Such absorption-spectrum-extrapolated wavelengths are compared to the ASE wavelengths and found to correlate for most of the dye-matrix couples. The propagation losses of PM597-doped organic polymers are also measured and accordingly found to increase with the glass transition temperature of the host matrix.

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