Photothermal nanoblade for single cell surgery and large cargo delivery

We report a photothermal nanoblade that utilizes a metallic nanostructure to harvest short laser pulse energy to generate highly localized explosive vapor bubbles for rapid cell membrane cutting. The cavitation bubble pattern is controlled by the metallic structure configuration, laser pulse duration and energy. Integrating the metallic nanostructure with a micropipette, the nanoblade can generate a micron-sized membrane access port for large cargo delivery with high efficiency (46%) and cell viability (>90%) into mammalian cells [1,2].