Identification of intracellular gold nanoparticles using surface-enhanced Raman scattering

The identification of intracellular distributions of noble metal nanoparticles is of great utility for many biomedical applications. We present an effective method to distinguish intracellular from extracellular nanoparticles by selectively quenching the SERS signals from dye molecules adsorbed onto star-shaped gold nanoparticles that have not been internalized by cells.