title: Folding Up of Gold Nanoparticle Strings into Plasmonic Vesicles for Enhanced Photoacoustic Imaging.
abstract: The stepwise self-assembly of hollow plasmonic vesicles with vesicular membranes containing strings of gold nanoparticles (NPs) is reported. The formation of chain vesicles can be controlled by tuning the density of the polymer ligands on the surface of the gold NPs. The strong absorption of the chain vesicles in the near-infrared (NIR) region leads to a much higher efficiency in photoacoustic (PA) imaging than for non-chain vesicles. The chain vesicles were further employed for the encapsulation of drugs and the NIR light triggered release of payloads. This work not only offers a new platform for controlling the hierarchical self-assembly of NPs, but also demonstrates that the physical properties of the materials can be tailored by controlling the spatial arrangement of NPs within assemblies to achieve a better performance in biomedical applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (USA).
authors.forename: Yijing
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (USA).
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (USA).
authors.forename: Kuikun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (USA).
authors.forename: Chenglin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (USA).
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Molecular Imaging and Nanomedicine (LOMIN), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), National Institutes of Health (USA).
authors.forename: Liming
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nie
authors.affiliation: Smart Hybrid Materials (SHMs) Lab, Department of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900 (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).
authors.forename: Niveen M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Khashab
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Molecular Imaging and Nanomedicine (LOMIN), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), National Institutes of Health (USA). shawn.chen@nih.gov.
authors.forename: Xiaoyuan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (USA). znie@umd.edu.
authors.forename: Zhihong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Nie
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry*; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission
chemical_list: D006046:Gold
keywords: block copolymers; gold nanoparticles; photoacoustic imaging; self-assembly; vesicles