Multifunctional nanoparticles as coupled contrast agents

摘要

Engineering compact imaging probes with highly integrated modalities is a key focus in bionanotechnology and will have profound impact on molecular diagnostics, imaging, and therapeutics. However, combining multiple components on a nanometer scale to create new imaging modalities unavailable from individual components has proven challenging. Here, we demonstrate iron oxide and gold coupled core-shell nanoparticles with well defined structural characteristics (e.g., size, shell thickness, and core-shell separation) and physical properties (e.g., electronic, magnetic, optical, thermal, and acoustic). The resulting multifunctional nanoprobes not only offer contrast for electron microscopy, magnetic resonance imaging, and scattering-based imaging, but more importantly, enable a new imaging mode, magnetomotive photoacoustic (mmPA) imaging, with remarkable contrast enhancement compared to PA images using conventional nanoparticle contrast agents.