Impact of Kapitza resistance on the stability and efficiency of photoacoustic conversion from gold nanorods

Plasmonic particles have been proposed for a broad variety of optical and hybrid applications, including the photothermal ablation and photoacoustic imaging of cancer, or their integration in photonic sensors. Here, we address the effect of thermal resistance at the gold-water interface, or Kapitza resistance, on the performance of photoacoustic conversion of gold nanorods. Our findings point to possible strategies for the optimization of plasmonic particles as contrast agents for imaging, or even as transducers for biosensing. We perform numerical simulations that project a simultaneous increase of efficiency and stability of photoacoustic conversion with a decrease of Kapitza resistance. We suggest an effective approach to modulate Kapitza resistance by including underresolved features as roughness or the presence of adsorbates. Inspired by this idea, we synthesize a rough variant of gold nanorods by the deposition and galvanic replacement of a silver shell, where roughness provides higher photoacoustic signals by about 70% and damage thresholds by 120%. In addition, we coat our particles with a protein corona and find a decrease of photoacoustic signals with shell thickness, which may inspire new solutions for biosensors based on a mechanism of photoacoustic transduction. Both our findings are consistent with an effective modulation of Kapitza resistance, which decreases upon roughening, due to an underlying increase of specific surface area, and increases upon coating with a protein shell that may act as a thermal insulation. We discuss possible directions to gain more advantage of our concept for topical applications at the crossroads of plasmonics, biomedical optics and biosensing.