Efficient Au nanostructures for NIR-responsive controlled drug delivery systems

Different photo-thermal agents such as gold nanostructures with various shapes and sizes including nano-rods, nano-cages, nano-shells exhibit tunable optical properties, surface chemistry, resonance frequency and non-toxicity. Furthermore, gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) also utilized for diagnosis purposes and drug carriers for thermo-therapy of biological cells targets and potential bio-medical applications against various cancer treatments. To control complications of conventional cancer therapeutics, Stimuli-assisted drug delivery systems (DDS) together with interior and exterior Stimuli-assisted prompts have received particular interest by the scientific community around the globe. Among both of them, external stimuli-responsive parameters provide more controlled DDSs that circumvent individual discrepancy. Many researchers reported that light-responsive DDSs manifest interesting features because of proficiency and preferable spatiotemporal control. Among them, near-infrared light-responsive DDSs are potential candidates that follow various mechanisms such as photo-thermal effect, two photon absorption, and up converting nano-particles. This review presents an over view of different morphologies of Au nanostructures boosting the efficiency of DDSs by utilizing the phenomenon of surface plasmon resonance by overcoming the major challenges.