Electrical catching and transfer of nanoparticles via nanotip silicon probe arrays

We demonstrated batch, pinpoint, and multisite-transfer of nanoparticles via vertically-aligned nanotip silicon probe arrays for powerful applications of nanoinjectors, including local drug delivery and DNA transfer into biological samples (e.g., cell, neuron and tissue). Although several nanoinjections have been demonstrated using “nanoprobe” (e.g., glass pipette, silicon nanowire and carbon nanotube [1–3]), the common issues of these devices are the limitation of the probe number, short length and robustness of the probe section. In order to solve these issues, we propose a nanoinjector, based on a vertical nanotip probe array with a high aspect ratio. Here, we demonstrated electrical batch trappings of nanoparticles at positive biased nanotips, and the trapped nanoparticles were released by ultrasonic vibration. These preliminary results indicate the nanoparticle transfer capability of the nanotip probes for use in multisite deep nanoinjections on numerous biological samples.