Monte Carlo simulation on a gold nanoparticle irradiated by electron beams

This study investigated the secondary electron production from a gold nanoparticle (GNP) irradiated by monoenergetic electron beams using Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. Spherical GNPs with diameters of 2, 50 and 100 nm in water were irradiated by monoenergetic electron beams with energies equal to 50 keV, 250 keV, 1 MeV and 4 MeV. MC simulations were performed using the Geant4 toolkit to determine the energy of the secondary electrons emitted from the GNPs. The mean effective range and deflection angle of the secondary electrons were tracked. Energy depositions inside and outside the nanoparticles due to the secondary electrons were also calculated. For comparisons, simulations were repeated by replacing the GNPs with water. Our results show that the mean effective range of secondary electrons increased with an increase of the GNP size and electron beam energy. For the electron beam energy and GNP size used in this study, the mean effective range was 0.5-15 µm outside the nanoparticle, which is approximately within the dimension of a living cell. The mean deflection angles varied from 78 to 83 degrees as per our MC results. The proportion of energy deposition inside the GNP versus that outside increased with the GNP size. This is different from the results obtained from a previous study using photon beams. The secondary electron energy deposition ratio (energy deposition for GNP/energy deposition for water) was found to be highest for the smallest GNP of 2 nm diameter in this study. For the energy deposited by the secondary electron, we concluded that the addition of GNPs can increase the secondary electron energy deposition in water, though most of the energy was self-absorbed by the large nanoparticles (50 and 100 nm). In addition, an electron source in the presence of GNPs does not seem to be better than photons as the yield of secondary electrons per unit mass of gold is less than water.