ABSTRACT
Nanoparticles are widely researched in the eld of biotechnology for their use as a contrast and therapeutic agent for several different diseases. ey are composed of an assortment of materials fabricated on the nanoscale. In this size range, typical bulk methods to measure the electromagnetic properties do not apply to certain materials, including noble metal particles, known as plasmonic nanoparticles. Plasmonic nanoparticles exhibit a property identied as surface plasmon resonance (SPR) (Jain et al. 2008). In this chapter, we will focus on this class of nanoparticlesspecically gold and silver, as they are the most commonly used nanoparticles in biological applications because of their SPR phenomena found in the visible to the near infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum (Kreibig and Vollmer 1995).
