Gold nanorods (AuNRs) based intelligent composite nanogels are the intelligent nanomaterials which combine the unique properties of both AuNRs and intelligent nanogels. Their prominent characteristic is that a variety of properties of the loaded AuNRs within the nanogels can be tuned by external stimulus
or external stimulus can be sensed by determining the change of their properties. The characteristics and synthesis methods of AuNRs based intelligent composite nanogels of three kinds of morphological structure including core-shell structure type
randomly filling type
strawberry structure type are firstly reviewed in this paper. Then
the properties and applications of AuNRs based intelligent composite nanogels are summarized. Finally
their future research direction and development outlook are commented.