Investigation the Effect of Conjugated Gold Nanoparticles on a Cell Membrane for Efficient Light Scattering

The progress of noninvasive optical systems for biomedical diagnostics necessitates a fundamental understanding of how light scatters from biological cells conjugated by artificial nano-particles. In this paper the effect of biological compatible gold nanoparticles conjugated on the membrane of a sample cell is investigated. Using the three dimensional finite difference time domain method, extinction and absorption cross sections of a single cell in presence of randomly distributed gold nanoparticles is numerically calculated. Simulation results show that by increasing the radii of conjugated gold nanoparticles the scattering cross section increases while the absorption cross section decreases (around wavelength λ=450nm). Moreover, it is shown that by increasing the number of conjugated gold nanoparticles, the deviation of scattering cross section reduces and the absolute value of this quantity becomes comparable with absorption cross section, affecting the total cross section. Simulation results confirm that by engineering the size of conjugated gold nanoparticles to the biological cell’s membrane, optophoresis systems can extend to such a living cells; developing integrated biosensors to efficiently trap and manipulate biological cells into lab-on-a-chip devices.

Keywords:

Localized surface plasmons , Gold nanoparticles , biological cells , FDTD method