Facile synthesis of urchin-like LaWO4Cl assemblies and their near-infrared photothermal conversion.

The construction of the hierarchical nanostructures of inorganic materials with high stability has attracted great attention for photothermal therapy. In this paper, we presented the preparation of urchin-like LaWO4Cl nanostructures assembled with nanoribbons via a facile solvothermal reaction. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis confirmed the formation of good crystalline urchin-like LaWO4Cl assemblies. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) revealed the element composition of the prepared urchin-like nanostructures. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigations showed that the urchin-like LaWO4Cl assemblies were composed of single crystalline nanoribbons with diameters less than 10 nm. When excited with an 808 nm near-infrared (NIR) laser at the power density of 1.91 W cm-2 for 5 min, the temperature quickly increased to 52 °C. The in vitro cytotoxicity of urchin-like LaWO4Cl was tested with human cervical cancer cells (HeLa), revealing excellent biocompatibility. More importantly, the photothermal treatment with urchin-like LaWO4Cl displayed great therapeutic efficacy in vitro. Thus, urchin-like LaWO4Cl would be a new promising NIR light-driven photothermal agent, which can also pave a new way for the material design of PTT agents.