The photoinstability of plasmonic particles remains one remarkable obstacle before their
clinical penetration as powerful contrast agents, for instance, in photoacoustic imaging. In
particular, gold nanorods easily revert to nanospheres and so lose their best optical features
under exposure to few-nanoseconds-long laser pulses. While this issue is attracting much
attention and stimulating ad hoc solutions, such as the addition of rigid shells, the biological
environment may cause even more instability. For instance, a frequent outcome of the …