Enhancement of photothermal heat generation by metallodielectric nanoplasmonic clusters

A four-member homogenous quadrumer composed of silver core-shell nanostructures is tailored to enhance photothermal heat generation efficiency in sub-nanosecond time scale. Calculating the plasmonic and photothermal responses of metallic cluster, we show that it is possible to achieve thermal heat flux generation of 64.7 mu W. cm(-2) and temperature changes in the range of Delta T = 150 K, using Fano resonant effect. Photothermal heat generation efficiency is even further enhanced by adding carbon nanospheres to the offset gap between particles and obtained thermal heat flux generation of 93.3 mu W. cm-2 and temperature increase of Delta T = 172 K. It is also shown that placement of dielectric spheres gives rise to arise collective magnetic dark plasmon modes that improves the quality of the observed Fano resonances. The presented data attests the superior performance of the proposed metallodielectric structures to utilize in practical tumor and cancer therapies and drug delivery applications. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America