Development of porous silicon-coated gold nanoparticles as potential theragnostic material

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been used widely as multifunctional materials for several biomedical applications due to their attractive characteristics. However, toxicity and aggregation of AuNPs are critical issues, and methods of effective surface modification are required to overcome these problems. In this study, porous silicon-coated gold nanoparticles (AuNP@pSi) were fabricated as a hybrid nanocomposite capable of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-sensing and drug carrier. First, size-controlled AuNPs were coated with a silica nano-shell, and the resulting silica layers were converted to porous silicon through magnesiothermic reduction. Overall results suggest that AuNP@pSi can be exploited as a SERS probe with efficient Raman signal improvement of benzenethiol as well as a drug carrier based on its high surface area (113.7 m(2) g(-1)) and porosity (13.38 nm, 0.3805 cm(3) g(-1)). Since the porous silicon possibly can serve as magnetic resonance imaging probes with DNP technology, this hybrid platform potentially can be utilized as powerful material capable of theragnosis system.