Bowl-like Nanoreactors Composed of Packed Gold Nanoparticles Surrounded with Silica Nanosheets for a Photothermally Enhancing Enzymatic Reaction

Using controllable gold sputtering and a hydrothermal process on silica particles, we fabricated a bowl-like plasmonic nanoreactor, which is composed of loosely packed gold nanoparticles surrounded with thin silica nanosheets. The open-end bowl-like spheres have the advantages of facile mass transfer, large binding surface, and high photothermal conversion at the same time. An extremely high photo-induced heating conversion efficiency can be achieved for the bowl-like spheres, which can adjust the temperature over a wide range from 50 to 270 °C under 532 nm laser irradiation with a power of 10–150 mW at a short exposure time (< 2 s). When used in an enzymatic reaction (cholesterol oxidase), the system showed much improved enzymatic catalysis performance due to the light-induced thermal effect on the activity of cholesterol oxidase.