In the current work, small hollow Au nanoparticles (d ≈ 16 nm) with excellent thermal stability and high photo-thermal conversion efficiency, which have great potential for use in photo-thermal cancer therapy, were prepared through galvanic replacement reaction between Ag nano-templates and gold salt. The position of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) bands for these nanoparticles could be tuned by varying the amount of gold salt. The hydrophobic hollow nanostructures were made water-dispersible by being encapsulated with poly(maleic anhydride-alt-1-octadecene) - PMAO. The obtained nanostructures were stable in an aqueous solution of NaCl with concentration up to 280 mM. The hollow gold nanoparticles (HGNPs) were then heated using an 808 nm laser at different power densities, the obtained data showed that they are highly photo-thermal stable under a high power density laser up to 1.6 W cm-2 after three circles of irradiation at 20 min per circle (20 min continuous irradiation for each circle). The facile synthesis of small size HGNPs with a plasmon peak in the near infrared range, colloidal and photo-thermal stability, and high capacity of conversion of photon energy into heat makes them a promising material for photo-thermal and imaging applications.
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