O Seminário de Ótica da próxima terça-feira, 03 de dezembro (14 horas, na Sala D do DF/UFPE) será apresentado pelo estudante de mestrado Túlio L. Pedrosa (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Elétrica).

Título: Evaluating Plasmonic Nanostructures for Photothermal Therapy

Resumo: Tissue temperature control has been widely used for therapeutic application in several areas of medicine as oncology, physiotherapy, urology, cardiology and ophthalmology. Photothermal therapy (PTT) is based on the induction of cellular damage by light absorption in a target tissue.  For an effective use of light on therapy, controlled and localized heating should be achieved. Localized heating has been accomplished by exploring plasmonic nanostructures. In this presentation, crucial optical parameters ruling plasmonic heating will be appraised exploiting a nanoparticle size-dependence approach. Based on finite-element method, the optimum size of gold nanorods for high performance infrared thermal therapy, at different wavelengths, will be revealed. The performance evaluation of nanoparticles as nanoheaters is a fundamental step to the development of efficient nanoplatforms for photothermal therapy. Here, the use of Thermal Lens Spectroscopy on the characterization of nanoheaters will be introduced.