This review is a comprehensive description of the past decade of research into understanding how the geometry and size of nanoparticles affect their interaction with biological systems: from single cells to whole organisms. Recently, there has been a great deal of effort to use both the shape and the size of nanoparticles to target specific cellular uptake mechanisms, biodistribution patterns, and pharmacokinetics. While the successes of spherical lipid-based nanoparticles have heralded marked changes in chemotherapy worldwide, the history of asbestos-induced lung disease casts a long shadow over fibrous materials to date. The impact of particle morphology is known to be intertwined with many physicochemical parameters, namely, size, elasticity, surface chemistry, and biopersistence. In this review, we first highlight some of the morphologies observed in nature as well as shapes available to us through synthetic strategies. Following this we discuss attempts to understand the cellular uptake of nanoparticles through various theoretical models before comparing this with observations from in vitro and in vivo experiments. In addition, we consider the impact of nanoparticle shape at different size regimes on targeting, cytotoxicity, and cellular mechanics.

A key challenge for modern chemistry research is to create materials that can respond to their environment. Here we discuss the promising features of a particular class of hybrid materialplasmonic polymer nanocomposites (PPNs). We discuss their application in three key and diverse technologies: optical data storage, sensing and imaging, and photothermal gels for in vivo therapy platforms. PPNs provide a flexible method for using surface plasmon spectroscopy in the solid state.Polymer dispersed plasmonic particles can be used for molecular detection, pH, temperature and humidity determination in the solid state. Data can be stored in these composites by writing patterns into the plasmonic particles using lasers to alter the shape or local refractive index. These nanocomposites combine a responsive material (the hydrogel) with a signal transduction element (the plasmonic particle). Important challenges in the development of these materials are also discussed including nanoporosity, nanoparticle dispersion and mechanical stability.

It is known that the nanoparticle-cell interaction strongly depends on the physicochemical properties of the investigated particles. In addition, medium density and viscosity influence the colloidal behaviour of nanoparticles. Here, we show how nanoparticle-protein interactions are related to the particular physicochemical characteristics of the particles, such as their colloidal stability, and how this significantly influences the subsequent nanoparticle-cell interaction in vitro. Therefore, different surface charged superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles were synthesized and characterized. Similar adsorbed protein profiles were identified following incubation in supplemented cell culture media, although cellular uptake varied significantly between the different particles. However, positively charged nanoparticles displayed a significantly lower colloidal stability than neutral and negatively charged particles while showing higher non-sedimentation driven cell-internalization in vitro without any significant cytotoxic effects. The results of this study strongly indicate therefore that an understanding of the aggregation state of NPs in biological fluids is crucial in regards to their biological interaction(s).

A major goal of nanotechnology is the assembly of nanoscale building blocks into functional optical, electrical, or chemical devices. Many of these applications depend on an ability to optically or electrically address single nanoparticles. However, positioning large numbers of single nanocrystals with nanometer precision on a substrate for integration into solid-state devices remains a fundamental roadblock. Here, we report fast, scalable assembly of thousands of single nanoparticles using electrophoretic deposition. We demonstrate that gold nanospheres down to 30 nm in size and gold nanorods <100 nm in length can be assembled into predefined patterns on transparent conductive substrates within a few seconds. We find that rod orientation can be preserved during deposition. As proof of high fidelity scale-up, we have created centimeter scale patterns comprising more than 1 million gold nanorods.