LED-Modulated Plasmoporation for Highly Efficient Intracellular Cargo Delivery to Suspension Cells

Abstract

Intracellular delivery of bioactive cargoes remains a major bottleneck in engineering therapeutic cellular responses. Here we report LED-modulated plasmoporation driven by the plasmonic photothermal effect of large-area gold nanoislands (AuNIs) for highly efficient cargo delivery into suspension cells. Plasmoporation operates through a sequential microfluidic network with AuNIs and a white LED module. LED-modulated mild photothermal cycling induces transient membrane phase transition and poration, followed by thermal relaxation for membrane recovery. Precisely controlled LED modulation shows intracellular delivery of propidium iodide into Jurkat cells with 80% delivery efficiency and 93% cell viability. Arrhenius-model-based analysis of LED-modulated temperature pulse-trains identifies an optimal cumulative cellular thermal damage (Ω) range of 0.11–0.15, yielding ≥70% delivery efficiency while maintaining high cell viability. Plasmoporation further demonstrates intracellular delivery of macromolecules up to 2000 kDa with delivery efficiencies exceeding 50%. This low-power, scalable plasmoporation offers a new approach for high-throughput immune cell engineering and therapeutic intracellular delivery.