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Thermo-plasmonic effect based neural stimulation has been suggested as an alternative optical neural stimulation technology without genetic modification. Integration of near infrared light with plasmonic gold nanoparticles has been demonstrated as a neuromodulation tool on in vitro neuronal network models. In order to further test the validity of the thermo-plasmonic neural stimulation across multiple biological models (in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo) avoiding genetic modification in optical neuromodulation, versatile engineering approaches to apply the thermoplasmonic effect would be required. In this work, we developed a gold nanorod attached optical fiber technology for the localized neural stimulation based on thermo-plasmonic effect. A simple fabrication process was developed for efficient nanoparticle coating on commercial optical fibers. The thermo-plasmonic optical fiber proved that it can locally modulate the neural activity in vitro. Lastly, we simulated the spatiotemporal temperature change by the thermo-plasmonic optical fiber and analyzed its applicability to in vivo animal models.

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