Advances in Optical Technologies
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 251718, 8 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/251718
Research Article
Ultrashort Laser Pulse Heating of Nanoparticles: Comparison of Theoretical Approaches
1Department of Physics and Optical Engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, 5500 Wabash Avenue, Terre Haute, IN 47803, USA
2Office of the Chancellor and Center for Nanoscience, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri—St. Louis, One University Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63121, USA
Received 28 January 2008; Accepted 11 March 2008
Academic Editor: Stoyan Tanev
Copyright © 2008 Renat R. Letfullin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
The interaction between nanoparticles and ultrashort laser pulses holds great interest in laser nanomedicine, introducing such possibilities as selective cell targeting to create highly localized cell damage. Two models are studied to describe the laser pulse interaction with nanoparticles in the femtosecond, picosecond, and nanosecond regimes. The first is a two-temperature model using two coupled diffusion equations: one describing the heat conduction of electrons, and the other that of the lattice. The second model is a one-temperature model utilizing a heat diffusion equation for the phonon subsystem and applying a uniform heating approximation throughout the particle volume. A comparison of the two modeling strategies shows that the two-temperature model gives a good approximation for the femtosecond mode, but fails to accurately describe the laser heating for longer pulses. On the contrary, the simpler one-temperature model provides an adequate description of the laser heating of nanoparticles in the femtosecond, picosecond, and nanosecond modes.