Despite much research efforts being devoted to the design optimization of metallic nanoshells, no account is taken of the fact that the number of the nanoshells that can be delivered to a given cancerous site vary with their size. In this paper, we study the effect of the nanoshell number density on the absorption and scattering properties of a gold-nanoshell ensemble exposed to a broadband nea...

BACKGROUND Gold nanoshells are excellent agents for photothermal ablation cancer therapy and are currently under clinical trial for solid tumors. Previous studies showed that passive delivery of gold nanoshells through intravenous administration resulted in limited tumor accumulation, which represents a major challenge for this therapy. In this report, the impact of direct intratumoral administ...

Gold (Au) nanoshells with solid silica cores have great potential for cancer photothermal therapy. However, this nanostructure cannot carry enough drugs. Here, we report a Au nanoshell with a hollow silica core for drug loading and cancer therapy. The silica shells were synthesized using nanoliposome templates, and then Au nanoshells were grown on the outer surface of the silica shells. Transmi...

Recent advances in nanotechnology have provided numerous opportunities to transform medical therapies for the treatment of diseases including cancer, atherosclerosis, and thrombosis. Here, we report, through in vitro studies and in vivo human pilot clinical studies, the use of inert, inorganic silica-gold nanoshells for the treatment of a widely prevalent and researched, yet poorly treated dise...

A simplified synthesis of hollow gold nanoshells 20-50 nm in diameter via the well-established templated galvanic replacement reaction of silver for gold is presented. The surface plasmon resonance absorbance of the nanoshells is tuned using basic colloid chemistry to control the size of the silver templates. The gold nanoshells have an aqueous core and are varied in size and shell thickness de...

Iron(III)-doped silica nanoshells are shown to possess an in vitro cell-receptor mediated targeting functionality for endocytosis. Compared to plain silica nanoparticles, iron enriched ones are shown to be target-specific, a property that makes them potentially better vehicles for applications, such as drug delivery and tumor imaging, by making them more selective and thereby reducing the nanop...

We have successfully utilized the newly developed near-infrared multispectral imaging (NIR-MSI) microscope to observe and measure directly the localized surface plasmon absorption (LSPR) of individual gold nanoshells. The NIR-MSI is suited for this task because it can simultaneously record spectral and spatial information of a sample with high sensitivity (single pixel resolution) and high spat...

Hexagonal Ag/Pt nanoshells were prepared by using a hexagonal Ag nanoplate as the displacement template and by introducing Pt ions. The prepared Ag/Pt nanoshells played the role of an electrocatalyst in an oxygen reduction process. Compared to spherical Pt and Ag/Pt nanoparticles, the hexagonal Ag/Pt nanoshells showed higher activity for oxygen electroreduction.

Gold nanoshells currently attract increasing research interests due to the important role in many subjects. For practical applications, random arrangement of the nanoparticles is often unfavored so that the assembly of gold nanoshells is becoming a central issue. We here proposed to utilize time-variant magnetic field to direct the assembly of gold nanoshells. It was discovered that the alterna...

This report describes the preparation and characterization of palladium nanoshells protected with alkanethiol self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) and their application as efficient catalysts. Monodispersed silica core particles (y100 nm in diameter) were prepared and coated with a thin layer of palladium (y20 nm in thickness). Subsequently, the palladium nanoshells were treated with two separate a...