Soft electroporation for delivering molecules into tightly adherent mammalian cells through 3D hollow nanoelectrodes

Electroporation of in-vitro cultured cells is widely used in biological and medical areas to deliver molecules of interest inside cells. Since very high electric fields are required to electroporate the plasma membrane, depending on the geometry of the electrodes the required voltages can be very high and often critical to cell viability. Furthermore, in traditional electroporation configuration based on planar electrodes there is no a priori certain feedback about which cell has been targeted and delivered and the addition of fluorophores may be needed to gain this information. In this study we present a nanofabricated platform able to perform intracellular delivery of membrane-impermeable molecules by opening transient nanopores into the lipid membrane of adherent cells with high spatial precision and with the application of low voltages (1.5–2 V). This result is obtained by exploiting the tight seal that the cells present with 3D fluidic hollow gold-coated nanostructures that act as nanochannels and nanoelectrodes at the same time. The final soft-electroporation platform provides an accessible approach for controlled and selective drug delivery on ordered arrangements of cells.