International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 89 (2015) 866–871

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

Photothermal response of hollow gold nanoshell to laser irradiation:

Continuous wave, short and ultrashort pulse
Ali Hatef a, Simon Fortin-Deschênes a, Etienne Boulais b, Frédéric Lesage c, Michel Meunier a,⇑
a
École Polytechnique de Montréal, Laser Processing and Plasmonics Laboratory, Engineering Physics Department, Montréal, Québec H3C 3A7, Canada
b
Department of Biological Engineering, Laboratory for Computational Biology & Biophysics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
c
École Polytechnique de Montréal, Department of Electrical Engineering, Montréal, Québec H3C 3A7, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper is to investigate numerically the photothermal response of the most common size of gold
Received 2 October 2014 nanoshell (AuNS) in an aqueous medium for biomedical applications. Three types of laser light irradiate
Received in revised form 16 May 2015 the particle; a continuous-wave (CW), short (nanosecond) and ultrashort (femtosecond) pulse laser. The
Accepted 16 May 2015
spatiotemporal evolution of the temperature profile inside and around the AuNS is computed using a
numerical framework based on the finite element method (FEM). For CW and nanosecond (ns) pulse laser
where the AuNS’s electrons and lattice are at thermal equilibrium, the ordinary heat diffusion equation is
Keywords:
used to describe the heat transfer to the surrounding water. For femtosecond (fs) pulse laser, due to the
Modeling and numerical simulation
Finite element method
inexistence of the thermal equilibrium, a two-temperature model (TTM) is used to describe the heat
Continuous wave transfer processes occurring in the AuNS and the normal heat diffusion equation is used for the heat flux
Short and ultra-short pulse laser calculation at the particle/water interface. For each case, the influence of laser intensity on the maximum
Hollow gold nanoshell and plasmonic temperature reached at the particle/water interface is studied. The aim of this study is to provide a
photothermal therapy description for the fundamentals of heat release of AuNSs and useful insights for the development of
these particles for biomedical applications such as drug delivery, photothermal cancer therapy and opto-
poration of cells.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction temperature raises killing tumour cells that can be furfure

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are well known for their capabili-
ties to support localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) due to
collective and coherent oscillations of free electrons at the surface
of the particle. In resonance with an external electromagnetic
wave, occurring at a specific wavelength range, the AuNPs show
unique optical and thermal properties [1,2]. Illumination of the
AuNPs at or close to LSPR wavelength results in a near field
enhancement, scattering and conversion of absorbed light energy
to heat [3]. In addition, the surface of AuNPs can be routinely func-
tionalized with active ligands, monoclonal antibodies and thiolated
molecules due to the strong Au-S bond [4,5]. These novel proper-
ties of AuNPs provide a highly localized functional and multifunc-
tional platform in biomedical applications, particularly in
photothermal therapy, optoporation of cells and selective or tar-
geted drug delivery. At low temperatures, this process can be
exploited for thermally induced release of drugs attached to
AuNPs, which allows precise, on-demand delivery into the intracel-
lular environment [6–8]. However, at higher temperature, AuNPs
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: michel.meunier@polymtl.ca (M. Meunier).
exploited for cancer therapy [9–13].
Among all AuNPs, the ultra-thin hollow gold nanoshells (AuNSs)
exhibits a unique combination of small size, strong, narrow and
tunable absorption band in the near infrared (NIR) tissue window
(wavelength: 700–900 nm). These particles consist of a spherical
gold shell filled with its embedding aqueous medium [14]. For
biomedical applications, smaller size (outer diameter, 30–50 nm)
allows prolonged blood circulation time and better chance in
crossing the tumour vessel wall. The strong and tunable absorption
band in NIR regime enables a large penetration depth, even at low
laser intensities, that ranges from a few millimeters to several cen-
timeters depending on tissue type [15–17]. The hollow core allows
higher drug loading capacity, easier synthesis, and the pure gold
composition reduces toxicity [18,19]. AuNSs are usually synthe-
sized using cobalt (Co) nanoparticles as sacrificial templates, the
gold shells being grown via a galvanic reaction with Au ions
[14,19–21].
Photothermal response of AuNSs strongly depends on the irra-
diation regime (CW, ns and fs) that can be selected based on the
requirement of a specific biological application. For instance, irra-
diation of AuNSs by a CW laser is best suited for applications that

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2015.05.071
0017-9310/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 A. Hatef et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 89 (2015) 866–871
require an enduring, moderate increase in temperature, such as
hyperthermia and photothermal release of molecules. In this case,
AuNSs dissipate the absorbed energy into their surrounding envi-
ronment without a substantial increase of their temperature
[22,23]. Some applications such as photoacoustic imaging of cells
and gene silencing by transfection, necessitate a much higher
energy density in the vicinity of the AuNSs [24]. Further reducing
of the pulse width up to fs regime enables a very high-localized
temperature increase, more efficient energy deposition allowing
the cleavage of bonds to link molecules to the AuNS surface [25].
In recent years, there has been few research interests to
advance fundamental understanding of plasmon-assisted pho-
tothermal phenomena around AuNS [26,27]. The main objective
of this paper is to investigate the spatiotemporal photothermal
response of the most common size of AuNS (40 nm diameter and
3 nm shell thickness) for biomedical applications [28]. The particle
is irradiated by CW, ns and fs laser pulses in water medium at a
wavelength of 800 nm where scattering in biological tissue is very
low. It has been found that such a AuNS around this size anneals
into solid particles within hours at 523 K [29], therefore, we
restrict the maximum temperature increase calculation to be in
the same range. For each irradiation regime we show the maxi-
mum temperature increase dependency and rate to laser intensity.
It is worth to mention here that although we performed the calcu-
lations for a particular sized AuNS, however, upon request the
developed tools are capable of doing the same calculation for any
metallic configuration and shape.
2. Methods
The modeled system consists of AuNS with water core of radius
of 17 nm and a gold layer with a thickness of 3 nm. The AuNS is
immersed in water since this medium has proven to be adequate
for the modeling of laser processes occurring in a cellular medium.
The time-dependent distribution of the electromagnetic field and
thermal response of the AuNS is modeled by a system of partial dif-
ferential equations (PDE). The system is solved in three-dimensional
(3D) using the finite element method (FEM) provided by the com-
mercial software COMSOL 4.3 (www.comsol.com).
2.1. Electromagnetic field distribution
Assuming time-harmonic electric field, the electric field distri-
bution ~
Eðr; tÞ is computed using the Helmholtz equation [13]:
 
~ 2 r ~
r  ðl1
r r  EÞ  k0 er  j E¼0
xe0
where er is relative permittivity. For gold shell this quantity is a
complex, frequency dependant number and interpolated from
Johnson and Christy [30]. For water er is set to be 1.77. The relative
permeability lr is taken as unity and k0 is the wave number. The
other parameters in Eq. (1) are given in the reference [13]. This
equation is solved in a spherical domain 10 times larger than the
AuNS with an outer perfectly matched layers (PML) shell and a scat-
tering type boundary condition that emulates an infinite domain.
Assuming a non-dissipative host medium, the absorbed and
scattered energies by the AuNS are obtained as [31]:
ZZ  the water and shell temperature appears at the interface. We solve
1 ~ ~scat  ~
Q scat ¼ Re Escat  H nds
2 s
ZZ 
1 ~ ~tot  ~
Q abs ¼ Re Etot  H nds
2 s
where ~E and H~ represent the electric and magnetic field vectors,
respectively. ~
n is an outward-pointing unit vector normal to the
867
surface of the AuNS. The absorption, scattering and extinction
cross-section are defined as rabs ¼ Q abs =I0 , rscatt ¼ Q scatt =I0 and
rext ¼ rabs þ rscatt , respectively. Here, I0 ¼ ð1=2Þe0 nw E20 represents
the intensity of the incident laser beam of amplitude E0 in the sur-
rounding medium.
2.2. Thermal evolution
The equation governs the thermal evolution of the AuNS and
surrounding water strongly depends on the irradiation
time-regime. Comparison the pulse laser time width to the
electron-lattice thermalization time 0.5–1 ps [32] plays a key role
to choose thermal evolutional equations. For CW irradiation and ns
pulses, the pulse width is much longer than electron-lattice ther-
malization time, therefore, the gold electrons and lattice are heated
in relative equilibrium. In this case the AuNS and water tempera-
ture evolution are calculated from the usual heat diffusion equa-
tion [33]:
@Tðr; tÞ
qðrÞcðrÞ ¼ r  ðkðrÞrTðr; tÞÞ þ Q ðr; tÞ; ð3Þ
@t
in above equation, T(r, t) is the local temperature, r is the posi-
tion with the origin fixed at the particle center and t is the
time. Three material parameters: cðrÞ; qðrÞ and kðrÞ are the heat
capacity, mass density and thermal conductivity, respectively.
Q ðr; tÞ ¼ h~
jðr; tÞ  ~
Eðr; tÞi is the local heat generation density result-
t
ing from the electric current density ~ jðr; tÞ in the shell. In the case
of pulse laser, the local field intensity calculated in Eq. (1) is modu-
lated by the Gaussian time profile of the incident laser pulse. The
intensity of the ns and fs pulse lasers are modeled by a Gaussian
curve, as following:
!
FL ½t  t 0 2
IðtÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi exp ð4Þ
2pt r 2t 2r
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
in the above equation, t r ¼ t l =2 2 ln 2 is the pulse width, where tl is
the laser pulse width defined as the full with at half maximum of
the Gaussian temporal profile, t0 is the position of the center of
the peak and FL is the incident laser energy density (fluence).
Absorption of radiation in the core and in the surrounding
medium is neglected. In our calculations, the following thermal
characteristics of water and gold are used: cw = 4182 J kg1 K1,
qw = 103 kg m3, kw = 0.6 W K1 m1, cAu = 130 J kg1 K1, qAu =
19.3  103 kg m3 and kAu = 300 W K1 m1.
To study fs pulsed laser and AuNS interaction mechanisms, we
ð1Þ consider the case where tl is much smaller than the characteristic
time constants of the transient non-equilibrium photothermal
effects. These characters are electron–lattice interactions and pho-
non–phonon interactions at the surface of the particle. For this
time regime the TTM can be used in which the electrons and lattice
remain at different temperatures (Te and Tl). This is due to the fact
that the heat conduction in the lattice is small compared to that in
the electrons. Also the electron relaxation time is shorter than tens
of fs for gold. In the water, considering laser fluences well below
the optical breakdown, direct absorption is neglected and the usual
one temperature heat diffusion equation applies. However,
because of the phonon mismatch factor, discontinuity between
ð2-aÞ the following set of thermal evolutional equations for the electrons
and the lattice for AuNS and water [34]:
ð2-bÞ
@T e ðr; tÞ
C e ðT e Þ ¼ r  ðke  rTðr; tÞÞ  G  ½T e ðr; tÞ  T l ðr; tÞ þ SðtÞ
@t
ð5-aÞ
868 A. Hatef et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 89 (2015) 866–871
@T l ðr; tÞ
C l ðT l Þ ¼ r  ðkl  rT l ðr; tÞÞ þ G  ½T e ðr; tÞ  T l ðr; tÞ  F
@t
@T ðr; tÞ
qm ðrÞcm ðrÞ m ¼ r  ðkm  rT m ðr; tÞÞ þ F;
@t
in above equations, Te, Tl and Tm are the time dependent tempera-
tures of the electrons, lattice and surrounding medium, respec-
tively. c is the heat capacity (ce, electronic; cl, lattice and cm,
medium heat capacity) and k is the thermal conductivity. The
second term on the right hand side in (5-a) and (5-b) describes
the energy exchange from the electrons to the lattice via elec-
tron–phonon coupling with a coefficient G. The thermal conduc-
tance G = 2  1016 W/m3K [32] relates the temperature drop at an
interface to the heat flux crossing the interface and constitutes
the coupling parameter between a particle and surrounding med-
ium energy equations. The term S(t) in Eq. (5-a) is the absorbed
laser energy. Also, the F term in Eqs. (5-b) and (5-c) describes the
heat transfer across the interface between AuNS and surrounding
which is defined as [34]:
3 magnitude of the field enhancement.
3hr 2
F¼ ½T l ðr; tÞ  T m ðr; tÞ
ðr32  r31 Þ
here, h is called interfacial thermal conductance and is the fitting
parameter for the cooling process of AuNS in aqueous solutions.
Its value is 105  106 Wm2K1 [35]. Here kl = 0.001  kAu,
ke = kAu, ce = 70  Te and cl = 3  106 J m3 K1 [36]. r2 and r1 are
the outer and inner shell radius, respectively.
It is worth to mention that in the previous studies on fs
laser-AuNP interaction [37], AuNP is treated as a point absorber
by considering kl DTl  0 and ke DTe  0 in Eqs. (5-a) and (5-b).
Neglecting these two terms causes a nonuniform temperature dis-
tribution at the surface of the AuNP. However, in our calculations,
we considered these two terms and removed this approximation.
This study focuses on irradiation conditions leading to moder-
ate temperature increase of the medium surrounding the particle.
This regime corresponds to temperature increases that lead to sig-
nificant cell membrane damage (55 K) [38]. Being significantly
lower than the annealing temperature of AuNS into solid AuNPs
(523 K [29]), evaporation or fragmentation of the AuNS is very
unlikely and is neglected in the modeling. In addition, temperature
reached in the aqueous medium remains well below the water crit-
ical temperature (647 K). Hence cavitation resulting from phase
explosion or explosive boiling is neglected.
3. Results and discussion
Fig. 1 shows the AuNS absorption, extinction and scattering
cross-sections as a function of wavelength. Absorption is domi-
nant, with a maximum value (rabs = 1.53  104 nm2) occurring at
the resonance wavelength of 715 nm (kmax).
The off resonant wavelength (k = 800 nm) lies on the middle of
minimum absorption window in water where the penetration
depth of the incident laser field is at its maximum value.
Therefore, our results can be more useful especially for biological
application where one can consider the biological tissue and envi-
ronment as water [39]. Please note that for off resonant wave-
length the AuNS absorption cross section (rabs = 1.53  104 nm2)
is around 24 times less than the on resonant wavelength case
(rabs = 6.4  102 nm2 at k = 715 nm). In result irradiating the
AuNS at this off resonant wavelength avoids overheating and dam-
aging the particle. Also the thermal energy deposition in AuNS is a
linear process, therefore one can easily use the results here in the
case of off resonant wavelength as well. From practical point of
view this wavelength is one of the most common and stable one
2
Absorption
1.8 Scattering
ð5-bÞ Extiction
1.6
Cross section (nm2×104)
1.4
ð5-cÞ
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
600 650 700 750 800 850
Wavelength (nm)
Fig. 1. FEM calculation of scattering, absorption and extinction cross sections for a
40 nm diameter AuNS with a 3 nm thick shell as a function of the incident laser
wavelength. The maximum energy absorption occurs at kmax = 715 nm. Inset shows
cross-section of the near-field enhancement distribution in and around an AuNS at
off-resonance wavelength k = 800 nm. The color legend on the right shows the
ð6Þ
for Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser. The inset in Fig. 1 shows
near-field enhancement when a linearly polarized laser irradiates
the particle. The color legend on the right shows the magnitude
of the field enhancement (|E|/|E0|). As shown in the inset, although
the incident laser field has an off-resonance wavelength, near-field
enhancement still occurs in a region 20 nm wide around the
structure and a significant portion of the electromagnetic energy
is absorbed in the gold shell.
3.1. Continuous wave laser illumination
The most trivial phenomenon occurs following the CW laser
irradiation is the heating of the AuNS and the subsequent heat
transfer to the water by a simple conduction process at the surface.
For this case, the time taken by the system to reach equilibrium
depends on the thermal conductivity and the thermal capacity of
the surrounding medium. However, for AuNS in water, the thermal
energy generated inside the particle dissipates through the water
within several nanoseconds [22].
We also performed calculations on the time evolution of the
temperature increase of the AuNS and the dependency of the evo-
lution on the incident CW laser beam intensity. The results show
that for all intensities, the time required to reach 90% of maximum
temperature increase is about 100 ns. In Fig. 2 we show maximum
temperature increase at the AuNS/water interface as a function of
laser intensity. The rate of this maximum temperature increase is
32.5 K cm2/MW. The inset shows the steady-state radial tempera-
ture increase in and around the AuNS. Knowledge of the heat
affected zone and space-dependent temperature increase is impor-
tant because in practice the AuNSs are functionalized by chemical
or biochemical materials (e.g. antibody, antigen or ligand) and they
may not be attached directly to the biological systems like cell
membrane, and temperature reached inside the AuNS alone might
not be relevant [40].
The temperature inside the AuNS is spatially uniform due to the
high thermal conductivity of gold and small shell volume. The
maximal temperature increase varies linearly with the field inten-
sity. Typically, the temperature increase is shown to drop to 10%
of its maximum value at 200 nm from the AuNS center, enabling
possible long-range interactions inside biological systems.
 A. Hatef et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 89 (2015) 866–871 869

300 temperature varies linearly with the fluence, with a slope of

Temperature Increase (K)

180
160 3.4 K cm2/mJ. The upper inset shows the time evolution of the tem-
140
120
perature increase on the shell’s outer surface when irradiated with
Max. temperature increase (K)

250 100 a single pulse with FL = 20 mJ/cm2. The laser peak intensity is
80
60
I = 3.75 MW/cm2. The maximum temperature increase
I = 5 MW/cm2
200
40 DTmax = 68 K is shown to occur 1 ns after the peak intensity.
20
0
0 50 100 150 200
Distance (nm)
3.3. Femtosecond pulse laser illumination
150

In this section we study the thermodynamic response of the

100 AuNS to a fs laser pulse. Fig. 4 illustrates the evolution of Te, Tl,
Slope=32.5 Kcm2/MW
and Tm, for a AuNS excited by a 100 fs laser pulse at a wavelength
of 800 nm and a laser fluence of 2 mJ/cm2. As mentioned in the
50 method section, the TTM is used to describe the thermal evolution
of the system, which neglects the initial nonthermal electron dis-
tribution. Due to the smaller electron heat capacity and electron–
0
electron scattering time, the conduction electrons in the shell first
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Laser Intensity (MW/cm2) absorb the laser energy through the excitation of a plasmon that
decays rapidly, leading to a highly energetic electron population.
Fig. 2. Maximum temperatures increase at the surface of AuNS embedded in water Therefore, Te rises very rapidly and reaches a maximum value
versus CW incident laser intensity. Inset shows the steady-state distribution of
temperature increase as a function of the distance from the AuNS center for
intensity of I = 5 MW/cm2.
10000 2
(a)
1.8
Te (Electron temperature)
300 80 4 1000 1.6
Temperature increase (K)

Intensity (MW/cm2)

60 3
Temperature increase (K)

1.4

Intensity ×104 (MW/cm2)

250
Max. temperature increase (K)

40 2
100 1.2
20 1 Tl (Lattice temperature)
200 1
0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 10 0.8
Time (ns)
70
150
Temperature increase (K)

60 0.6
50
40
1 Tm (Medium temperature) 0.4
100
30
0.2
20
8 ns 10 ns
50 10 0.1 0
0 0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000
Slope=3.4 Kcm2/mJ 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Distance (nm) Time (ps)
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 350 6000
Laser fluence (mJ/cm2)
Maximum lattice & medium temperature increase (K)

(b)
Fig. 3. Maximum temperature increases variation on the surface of AuNS embed- 300
5000

Maximum electron temperature increase (K)

ded in water irradiated by a 5 ns laser pulse at 800 nm versus laser fluence. In upper
inset the solid and dashed line shows the temperature increase evolution and the
250 Te (Max. Electron temperature)
pulse intensity, respectively. In lower inset the solid and dashed line shows the 4000
Slope=1500 Kcm2/mJ
temperature increase profile as a function of the radial distance from the particle
center on the pulse peak time (8 ns) and 10 ns. For both insets the fluence is 20 mJ/ 200
cm2.
3000
Tl (Max. Lattice temperature)
150 Slope=113 Kcm2/mJ
3.2. Nanosecond pulse laser illumination 2000
100
In this case we study the AuNS thermodynamic response when
Tm (Max. Medium temperature)
the particle is irradiated by a Gaussian ns laser pulse with a dura- 1000
50 Slope=20 Kcm2/mJ
tion tl = 5 ns, centered at time t0 = 8 ns. This pulse width is much
longer than the characteristic time constants of the transient
0 0
non-equilibrium photothermal effects. To calculate the tempera- 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
ture evolution of the particle during and after the interaction with Laser fluence (mJ/cm2)
the laser pulse, we numerically solve the heat transfer Eq. (3)
[41,42]. Fig. 3 shows how the maximum temperature at the Fig. 4. (a) Time dependent temperature evolution of electrons, Te, lattice Tl and
AuNS/water interface varies with the fluence of the incident ns water temperature Tm, at the AuNS–water interface, for a laser pulse of 100 fs at
wavelength k = 800 nm with a fluence of 2 mJ/cm2. The dotted curve shows the
laser pulse. Increasing the energy density of the laser pulse is
Gaussian intensity profile of the pulse. (b) The maximum temperature increase of
shown to have no effect on the time required for the particle to (star markers) electrons (Te), (circle markers) lattice (Tl), and (square markers)
reach its maximum temperature. Interestingly, the maximum water (Tm) at the AuNS/water interface for different fluences.
870 A. Hatef et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 89 (2015) 866–871
Table 1
Comparison the rate of maximum temperature increase in AuNS for CW, ns and fs
pulsed laser irradiance.
Laser irradiance Rate
CW 32.5 K cm2/MW
Ns pulsed laser 3.4 K cm2/mJ
Fs pulsed laser 113 K cm2/mJ
4360 K that happens 325 fs after the pulse peak. Subsequently, the
energy deposited into the electronic system is transferred via elec-
tron–lattice coupling to the lattice, increasing Tl up to 384 K within
16 ps. Finally, by lattice–lattice interactions, the thermal energy is
transferred to the environment as the AuNS and medium reach
their equilibrium temperature. Here, Te and Tl reach thermal equi-
librium within 20 ps and the AuNS transfers its energy to its sur-
rounding environment within several hundreds of picoseconds
(4 ns).
Our results show that the time taken by the shell’s electrons
and lattice to reach their respective maximal temperature is
weakly dependent on the incident fluence, while it remain fixed
at Dt = 86 ps in the case of the surrounding water. Fig. 4(b) shows
the maximal lattice, electron and water temperature increase as a
function of laser fluence. As shown in this figure, the maximum
temperature increases linearly with the laser fluence, with slopes
Te,max, Tl,max and Tm,max being 1500, 113 and 20 K cm2/mJ,
respectively.
Note that Te, Tl and Tm reach thermal equilibrium after 4 ns.
Here, the fluence required to reach a certain temperature is shown
to be significantly lower for fs pulses than for ns laser irradiation.
This can be of crucial importance in some biomedical applications,
where high laser power can damage living tissues.
4. Conclusion
In this paper we presented a numerical framework to study
thermodynamic response of hollow gold nanoshells (AuNSs) to a
continuous wave (CW), short (ns) and ultra-short (fs) pulse laser
irradiation. The AuNSs have a diameter of 40 nm with 3 nm shell
thicknesses that is the most common and appropriate size for
biomedical applications [28]. Experimentally it has been shown
that for such a small size AuNS, if the gold lattice temperature
increase is more than 523 K, the particle most probably collapse
to a solid particle. Therefore, for all cases we restricted our param-
eters to avoid over heating the AuNP causing particle fragmenta-
tion. In order to respect this restriction, we set an off resonance
laser wavelengths for all cases at k = 800 nm. For all cases, we have
developed a computational platform based on finite element
method for modeling transient and steady state temperature of
the nanoshell-environment for different laser parameters. These
parameters were the intensity for CW laser and the laser fluence
in the case of ns and fs laser pulses. Table 1 compares the rate of
maximum temperature increase in AuNS for CW, ns and fs pulsed
laser irradiance.
Conflict of interest
None declared.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Mrs. Alexandra
Thibeault-Eybalin for her insights and editing the manuscript, Le
Groupe de recherche en sciences et technologies biomédicales
(GRSTB) and Unité de participation et d’initiation à la recherche
(UPIR) for financial support.
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