Open AccessIn vitro study of enhanced photodynamic cancer cell killing effect by nanometer-thick gold nanosheets
Author(s) -
Ziyi Zhang,
Dalong Ni,
Fei Wang,
Xin Yin,
Shreya Goel,
Lazarus German,
Yizhan Wang,
Jun Li,
Weibo Cai,
Xudong Wang
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
nano research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.536
H-Index - 125
eISSN - 1998-0124
pISSN - 1998-0000
DOI - 10.1007/s12274-020-2990-7
Subject(s) - photodynamic therapy , singlet oxygen , nanomaterials , materials science , irradiation , nanotechnology , cancer cell , nanoparticle , colloidal gold , nanometre , chemistry , oxygen , cancer , medicine , physics , organic chemistry , nuclear physics , composite material
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) by near-infrared (NIR) irradiation is a promising technique for treating various cancers. Here, we reported the development of free-standing wafer-scale Au nanosheets (NSs) that exhibited an impressive PDT effect. The Au NSs were synthesized by ionic layer epitaxy at the air-water interface with a uniform thickness in the range from 2 to 8.5 nm. These Au NSs were found very effective in generating singlet oxygen under NIR irradiation. In vitro cellular study showed that the Au NSs had very low cytotoxicity and high PDT efficiency due to their uniform 2D morphology. Au NSs could kill cancer cells after 5 min NIR irradiation with little heat generation. This performance is comparable to using 10 times mass loading of Au nanoparticles (NPs). This work suggests that two-dimensional (2D) Au NSs could be a new type of biocompatible nanomaterial for PDT of cancer with an extraordinary photon conversion and cancer cell killing efficiency.