Abstract
A photochemical method of preparing gold-maghemite core-shell nanoparticles by using artificial lamps or sunlight is developed in this research. Core-shell metal-semiconductor nanoparticles possess (a) Schottky junctions which can enhance plasmonic induced charge separations and (b) tailored absorbance spectra for absorbing solar light and tissue-penetrable near-infrared (NIR), so they are potentially useful and important for solar energy applications or cancer phototherapy. In our work, the photosynthesized core-shell nanoparticles (PCNPs) was applied for cancer phototherapy and antimicrobial agent. By comparing with similar-sized gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), we highlighted that the photogenerated radicals of PCNPs within cells can cause the cell death more efficiently instead of heat. Thus, it is a demonstration of photodynamic therapy (PDT) achieved by irradiation of PCNPs instead of photothermal therapy (PTT). And the radical generation ability also showed quite antimicrobial efficiency.