Silica-gold nanoshell@graphene: a novel class of plasmonic nanoagents for photothermal cancer therapy

Abstract

Abstract In the current work, the optical properties of graphene-wrapped gold nanoshells (GGNSs) with a silica core for different sizes and geometries are investigated based on effective medium and Gans theories in tumor tissue. In addition, bioheat transfer equations are used to obtain the temperature distribution in the kidney tumor and its surrounding medium. The localized surface plasmon resonance peak of GGNSs can be easily tuned inside a large region of biological windows by controlling the thicknesses of gold and graphene layers and their aspect ratios for spheroidal nanoshells. Also, we show that oblate spheroidal GGNSs, due to a high temperature rise, are very effective for photothermal cancer therapy. Moreover, the rise in temperature for spherical nanoshells increases as the thickness of the graphene shell increases, while it is independent of the thickness of the graphene shell for spheroidal GNSs. Finally, the regions of tumor tissue with permanent thermal damage are determined by calculating thermal damage in tumor tissue. Our results demonstrate that GGNSs have a high potential for photothermal cancer therapy.