ense heat under solar irradiation of Au NPs and to inactivate viruses, as demonstrated by Loeb et al. with bacteriophages MS2 and PR772 exposed to Au nanorods and nanocubes or to surfaces coated with such NPs.189 Close contact between NPs and the pathogen is necessary for the process to be effective, which supposes that NPs adsorb onto their surface. Elsewhere, Nazari et al. used femtosecond pulsed laser irradiation on Au nanorods to inactivate murine leukemia virus (MLV).190 Here, inactivation did not require contact between Au NRs and viruses, and the addition of ROS scavengers did not reduce the inactivation effect, suggesting that neither heat nor ROS generation accounted for the observed effect. The authors propose that the underlying mechanism is plasmo