摘要： Photothermal cancer therapy, also called photothermal therapy (PTT), uses light‐induced heat to treat cancer cells. PTT has attracted attention owing to its advantages over traditional cancer therapies such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy (RT), and surgery. Thermal therapy was discovered during the nineteenth century when cancer patients were administered living bacteria to cause inflammation and subsequent fever. The use of circulating heated water to treat uterine cervical cancer was also reported during that era. Owing to the rudimentary technology of that age, neither clinical applications nor further studies of thermal therapy were explored. Interest in PTT was revived in the 1980s, and owing to the fast development of optical and nanomaterial technology during recent decades, thermal therapy, particularly PTT has become a fast‐growing field of study.