The great promise of photodynamic therapy (PDT) has thrusted the rapid progress of developing highly effective photosensitizers (PS) in killing cancerous cells and bacteria. To mitigate the intrinsic limitations of the classical molecular photosensitizers, researchers have been looking into designing new generation of nanomaterial-based photosensitizers (nano-photosensitizers) with better photostability and higher singlet oxygen generation (SOG) efficiency, and ways of enhancing the performance of existing photosensitizers. In this paper, we review the recent development of nano-photosensitizers and nanoplasmonic strategies to enhance the SOG efficiency for better PDT performance. Firstly, we explain the mechanism of reactive oxygen species generation by classical photosensitizers, followed by a brief discussion on the commercially available photosensitizers and their limitations in PDT. We then introduce three types of new generation nano-photosensitizers that can effectively produce singlet oxygen molecules under visible light illumination, i.e., aggregation-induced emission nanodots, metal nanoclusters (< 2 nm), and carbon dots. Different design approaches to synthesize these nano-photosensitizers were also discussed. To further enhance the SOG rate of nano-photosensitizers, plasmonic strategies on using different types of metal nanoparticles in both colloidal and planar metal-PS systems are reviewed. The key parameters that determine the metal-enhanced SOG (ME-SOG) efficiency and their underlined enhancement mechanism are discussed. Lastly, we highlight the future prospects of these nanoengineering strategies, and discuss how the future development in nanobiotechnology and theoretical simulation could accelerate the design of new photosensitizers and ME-SOG systems for highly effective image-guided photodynamic therapy.

光动力疗法（PDT）的巨大前景推动了开发高效光敏剂（PS）杀死癌细胞和细菌的快速进展。为了减轻经典分子光敏剂的固有局限性，研究人员一直在研究设计具有更好光稳定性和更高单线态氧生成（SOG）效率的新一代纳米材料光敏剂（纳米光敏剂），以及增强现有分子光敏剂性能的方法。光敏剂。在本文中，我们回顾了纳米光敏剂和纳米等离子体策略的最新发展，以提高 SOG 效率以获得更好的 PDT 性能。首先，我们解释了经典光敏剂产生活性氧的机制，然后简要讨论了市售光敏剂及其在 PDT 中的局限性。然后我们介绍了三种在可见光照射下可以有效产生单线态氧分子的新一代纳米光敏剂，即聚集诱导发射纳米点、金属纳米团簇(< 2 nm)和碳点。还讨论了合成这些纳米光敏剂的不同设计方法。为了进一步提高纳米光敏剂的SOG率，对在胶体和平面金属-PS系统中使用不同类型金属纳米颗粒的等离子体策略进行了综述。讨论了决定金属增强 SOG (ME-SOG) 效率的关键参数及其强调的增强机制。 最后，我们强调了这些纳米工程策略的未来前景，并讨论了纳米生物技术和理论模拟的未来发展如何加速新型光敏剂和 ME-SOG 系统的设计，以实现高效的图像引导光动力治疗。