Devising strategies for the controlled injection of functional nanoparticles and reagents into living cells paves the way for novel applications in nanosurgery, sensing, and drug delivery. Here, we demonstrate the light-controlled guiding and injection of plasmonic Janus nanopens into living cells. The pens are made of a gold nanoparticle attached to a dielectric alumina shaft. Balancing optical and thermophoretic forces in an optical tweezer allows single Janus nanopens to be trapped and positioned on the surface of living cells. While the optical injection process involves strong heating of the plasmonic side, the temperature of the alumina stays significantly lower, thus allowing the functionalization with fluorescently labeled, single-stranded DNA and, hence, the spatially controlled injection of genetic material with an untethered nanocarrier.

We investigate the optical and morphological properties of gold nanoparticles grown by reducing a gold salt with Na2S. Lasers are tuned to the observed plasmon resonances, and the optical forces exerted on the nanoparticles are used to selectively print individual nanoparticles onto a substrate. This enables us to combine dark-field spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy to compare the optical properties of single nanoparticles with their morphology. By arresting the synthesis at different times, we are able to investigate which type of nanoparticle is responsible for the respective resonances. We find that thin Au nanotriangles are the source of the observed near infrared (NIR) resonance. The initial lateral growth of these triangles causes the plasmon resonance to redshift into the NIR, whereas a subsequent thickening of the triangles and a concomitant truncation lead to a blueshift of the resonance. Furthermore, we find that the nanotriangles produced have extremely narrow line widths (187 ± 23 meV), show nearly isotropic scattering, and are stable for long periods of time. This shows their vast potential for applications such as in vivo imaging and bio(chemical) sensing. The method used here is generally applicable to other syntheses, and shows how complex nanostructures can be built up on substrates by selectively printing NPs of varying plasmonic resonances.