Nanoparticles have a great deal of potential in medicine:
for diagnostics, as a vehicle for active substances or a tool to kill off
tumours using heat. ETH Zurich researchers have now developed particles that
are relatively easy to produce and have a wide range of applications.
If you put your hand over a switched-on torch in the dark,
it appears to glow red. This is because long-wavelength red light beams
penetrate human tissue more effectively than short-wavelength blue light. ETH
Zurich researchers exploit this fact in a new kind of nanoparticles: so-called
plasmonic particles, which heat up when they absorb near-infrared light. This
could enable them to kill tumour tissue with heat, for instance.