The photothermal conversion performance of the gold nanowires was examined using an aqueous dispersion of the particles. Briefly, 0.5 ml of the gold nanowires dispersion was added to an equal volume of deionized water in a quartz cuvette. The sample was irradiated via an 808-nm NIR laser with different laser powers (2.0-4.0 W cm -2 ) for more than 10 minutes. The temperature increments of the dispersions were directly recorded by a digital thermometer at each time interval.