Plasmonically Engineered Nanoprobes for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

The localized surface plasmon resonance of metal nanoparticles is the collective oscillation of electrons on particle surface, induced by incident light, and is a particle composition-, morphology-, and coupling-dependent property. Plasmonic engineering deals with highly precise formation of the targeted nanostructures with targeted plasmonic properties (e.g., electromagnetic field distribution and enhancement) via controlled synthetic, assembling, and atomic/molecular tuning strategies. These plasmonically engineered nanoprobes (PENs) have a variety of unique and beneficial physical, chemical, and biological properties, including optical signal enhancement, catalytic, and local temperature-tuning photothermal properties. In particular, for biomedical applications, there are many useful properties from PENs including LSPR-based sensing, surface-enhanced Raman scattering, metal-enhanced fluorescence, dark-field light-scattering, metal-mediated fluorescence resonance energy transfer, photothermal effect, photodynamic effect, photoacoustic effect, and plasmon-induced circular dichroism. These properties can be utilized for the development of new biotechnologies and biosensing, bioimaging, therapeutic, and theranostic applications in medicine. This Perspective introduces the concept of plasmonic engineering in designing and synthesizing PENs for biomedical applications, gives recent examples of biomedically functional PENs, and discusses the issues and future prospects of PENs for practical applications in bioscience, biotechnology, and medicine.

Hot‐Electron‐Mediated Photochemical Reactions: Principles, Recent Advances, and Challenges

“…In particular, the accessible "hot spots" of precisely controllable plasmonic nanogap and nanojunction structures could enable the efficient capturing of locally enriched hot electrons by nearby molecules or semiconductors, simultaneously improving the hot electron generation and injection efficiencies. [55] Such strongly coupled nanostructures are promising for use in the hot electron-mediated chemical reactions.…”

Biocomputing with Nanostructures on Lipid Bilayers

“…This feature has been exploited to build sophisticated nanodevices, such as logic‐gated nanorobots for delivering molecular cargos and molecular circuit boards for operating fast DNA circuits. Nanoparticles provide optical, magnetic, electronic, and catalytic properties that convert a range of chemical and physical stimuli to structural changes or dynamic behaviors; such functionalities are employed to connect these physical modalities with biomolecular recognition and computation. For example, plasmonic nanoparticles can convert their structural assemblies driven by surface molecular switches into amplified optical signals visible to naked eyes .…”

Golden Opportunities: Plasmonic Gold Nanostructures for Biomedical Applications based on the Second Near‐Infrared Window

“…Colloidal plasmonic nanoparticles (PNPs) have attracted enormous attention because of their unique optical, chemical, electronic, and catalytic properties. They have been widely applied in various fields including plasmonics, sensing, catalysis, and biomedical imaging/diagnostics/therapeutics . Among the many PNPs, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) offer a suitable platform, especially for biomedical applications, owing to their chemical/biological inertness and low cytotoxicity in a variety of cell and animal models.…”

“…They have been widely applied in various fields including plasmonics, sensing, cata lysis, and biomedical imaging/diagnostics/therapeutics. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Among the many PNPs, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) offer a suitable platform, especially for biomedical applications, owing to their chemical/biological inertness and low cytotoxicity in a variety of cell and animal models. They also exhibit versatile and straightforward surface functionalization with a wide range of bio logical ligands such as oligonucleotides, proteins, and antibodies by forming stable bonding pairs such as Au-thiol bonds for specific/selective binding to biological targets or organs.…”