Preparations and Applications in Nanomedicine of Nanoshells Consisting of a Silica Core Covered by a Gold Shell

Since nanoshells consisting of a silica core covered by a gold shell possess high biocompatibility and specially tunable plasmon resonant response based on the relative dimensions of the core radius and shell thickness, they are extremely concerned in many research fields including nanomedicine. The current status of study on the silica/gold nanoshells is reviewed in this paper, meanwhile, the preparing methods and the important applications in nanomedicine of the silica/gold nanoshells are elucidated in detail.