State of the Art in Gold Nanoparticle Synthesisation via Pulsed Laser Ablation in Liquid and Its Characterisation for Molecular Imaging: A Review

Abstract

With recent advances in nanotechnology, various nanomaterials have been used as drug carriers in molecular imaging for the treatment of cancer. The unique physiochemical properties and biocompatibility of gold nanoparticles have developed a breakthrough in molecular imaging, which allows exploration of gold nanoparticles in drug delivery for diagnostic purpose. The conventional gold nanoparticles synthetisation methods have limitations with chemical contaminations during the synthesisation process and the use of higher energy. Thus, various innovative approaches in gold nanoparticles synthetisation are under development. Recently, studies have been focused on the development of eco-friendly, non-toxic, cost-effective and simple gold nanoparticle synthesisation. The pulsed laser ablation in liquid (PLAL) technique is a versatile synthetic and convincing technique due to its high efficiency, eco-friendly and facile method to produce gold nanoparticle. Therefore, this study aimed to review the eco-friendly gold nanoparticle synthesisation method via the PLAL method and to characterise the gold nanoparticles properties for molecular imaging. This review paper provides new insight to understand the PLAL technique in producing gold nanoparticles and the PLAL parameters that affect gold nanoparticle properties to meet the desired needs in molecular imaging.

Synthesis of nanoparticles using pulsed laser

“…It creates shock waves moving toward solid and liquid target in opposite directions. This shock wave increases the temperature and pressure inside the plume [28].…”

“…The amount of ablated area depends on the absorbed energy (E). PLAL process parameters to estimate the ablated amount by the relation of E 1/3 ∝ τ e ,E 1/2 ∝ τ a ,E 2/3 ∝ L a , and τ a ˃˃τ 1 are related to each other, where in this relation, τ 1 ,L a , τ a , and τ e are the laser pulse time, ablation depth, ablation process time, and the electronic temperature during the ablation process, respectively [28].…”

“…The process forms a thin layer of vapor around the plasma volume and creates a bubble caused by cavitation on a time scale of 10 À7 to 10 À6 seconds, and this bubble disappears on a time scale of 10 À4 seconds. The bubble grows in the liquid to a maximum diameter of millimeter-scale [28].…”

“…This bubble caused by cavitation acts as a rule for the nucleation of nanoparticles, their growth, and accumulation. The interaction of the bubble with the enclosed particles is an essential step in determining the size of the primary particles [28]. The following is a more detailed explanation of the plasma phase and the dynamic behavior of the bubble caused by cavitation.…”

A computational study of the influence of nanoparticle shape on clathrin-mediated endocytosis

“…With the development of nanotechnology, nanoparticles (NPs) have opened new avenues for various biomedical applications such as drug/gene delivery, 1,2 molecular imaging 3,4 and diagnostic purposes. [5][6][7] The process of NP internalization into the cell is very important in most of the biomedical applications.…”