Fig. 3: Plasmonic lysis effects of nano-plasmonic structures.

a Schematic diagram illustrating the mechanism of cell disruption by the oxidative mechanism through two main pathways: (1) direct contact and (2) light-induced photothermal effect. Reprinted with permission from ref. ²⁸⁶. Copyright 2019 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim. b Gold nanoparticles embedded in conjunction with a modified herringbone-structured GASI microfluidic chip to capture, enrich, and extract their DNA via a 532 nm laser with a power of 300 mW for 10 irradiations. Reprinted with permission from ref. ⁹⁸. Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V. c Gold-coated nanoporous membrane enables 40,000-fold bacterial enrichment from a 1 mL sample in 2 min and photothermal lysis of bacteria within 1 min through ultrafast light-to-heat conversion. Reprinted with permission from ref. ⁸. Copyright 2019 American Chemical Society. d Multi-principal element nanoparticles (FeNiCu) show the release of metal ions (Cu, Ni, and Fe cations) with different binding affinity to bacterial cell membrane protein functional groups, leading to the disruption of bacterial walls. The release of ions decreased from copper to nickel and then to iron. Reprinted with permission from ref. ¹⁰². Copyright 2023 American Chemical Society. e Strongly absorbed plasmonic gold nanoislands (SAP-AuNIs) generate uniform photothermal heating, achieving rapid cell lysing 93% of PC9 cells at 90 °C in 90 s without nucleic acid degradation. Reprinted with permission from ref. ⁷. Copyright 2023 American Chemical Society. f A rapid antimicrobial-resistance point-of-care identification device (RAPIDx) can extract contamination-free active target enzyme by photothermal lysis of bacterial cells on a nanoplasmonic functional layer on-chip without destroying the enzymatic activity by pulsed LED. Reprinted with permission from ref. ¹⁰¹. Copyright 2024 Wiley-VCH GmbH.