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Nanomaterials are commonly used in biomedical research, mostly in cancer diagnosis and therapy. In this study, we used dark-field hyperspectral systems to investigate nanomaterials for the biological interaction of the opsonized or pegylated nanomaterials. Gold nanoparticles have good biocompatibility and exhibit strong light scattering behavior under the dark-field microscope. Those properties make it feasible to study the interaction between the surface functionalized nanomaterials and cellular micro-environments multi-dimensionally.

Nanophotonics has raised a great attention because detection limit can easily go down to the molecular level. Herein, we present a dark-field integrated Light-eye Technology (iLeyeT) system for monitoring of polarization-dependent surface plasmons of single shaped nanomaterials. Single shaped gold nanomaterial such as gold nanorod present both longitudinal and transverse surface plasmonic resonance under dark-field microscope. The orientation of single nanomaterials significantly tunes the direction of polarized light. We introduce a programmable light source into the dark-field microscope and image the relative peak intensities of the transverse and longitudinal surface plasmon via fast tuning wavelength. The signals from single nanomaterials can be visualized and detected by the dark-field iLeyeT system.

We present a general method for converting colloidal nanomaterials into microbubbles as ultrasound contrast agents. Protein-caged nanomaterials, made either by self-assembled nanoparticles' protein corona or by fluorescent gold nanoclusters, can be rapidly transformed into microbubbles via a sonochemical route, which promote disulfide cross-linking of cysteine residues between protein-caged nanomaterials and free albumin during acoustic cavitation. The proposed methods yielded microbubbles with multiple functions by adjusting the original nanoparticle/protein mixture. We also showed a new dual-modal imaging agent of fluorescent gold microbubbles in vitro and in vivo, which can hold many potential applications in medical diagnostics and therapy.