Abstract
AbstractPlasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) are exploited to concentrate light, provide local heating and enhance drug release when coupled to smart polymers. However, the role of NP assembling in these processes is poorly investigated, although their superior performance as nanoheaters has been theoretically predicted since a decade. Here we report on a compound hydrogel (agarose and carbomer 974P) loaded with gold NPs of different configurations. We investigate the dynamics of light-heat conversion in these hybrid plasmonic nanomaterials via a combination of ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy and hot-electrons dynamical modeling. The photothermal study ascertains the possibility to control the degree of assembling via surface functionalization of the NPs, thus enabling a tuning of the photothermal response of the plasmon-enhanced gel under continuous wave excitation. We exploit these assemblies to enhance photothermal release of drug mimetics with large steric hindrance loaded in the hydrogel. Using compounds with an effective hydrodynamic diameter bigger than the mesh size of the gel matrix, we find that the nanoheaters assemblies enable a two orders of magnitude faster cumulative drug release toward the surrounding environment compared to isolated NPs, under the same experimental conditions. Our results pave the way for a new paradigm of nanoplasmonic control over drug release.
Highlights
The optical properties of metal nanoparticles (NPs), their localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs), are well established [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Using compounds with an effective hydrodynamic diameter bigger than the mesh size of the gel matrix, we find that the nanoheaters assemblies enable a two orders of magnitude faster cumulative drug release toward the surrounding environment compared to isolated NPs, under the same experimental conditions
Our results indicate that the presence or absence of PEGylation onto absorption spectrum of the non-PEGylated NPs (Au NPs) can tune the final performance of the drug delivery devices
Summary
The optical properties of metal nanoparticles (NPs), their localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs), are well established [1,2,3,4,5,6]. It is straightforward to design and fabricate high-quality metal NPs with tailored optical properties (such as optimized absorption, scattering coefficients and narrow LSPR bands) for multiple purposes, ranging from the detection of chemicals and biological molecules [7,8,9,10,11] to light-harvesting enhancement in solar cells [12,13,14,15] or applications in nanomedicine [16,17,18,19].
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