Plasmon-Enhanced Pan-Microbial Pathogen Inactivation in the Cavitation Regime: Selectivity Without Targeting

Pan-microbial inactivation technologies that do not require high temperatures, reactive chemical compounds, or UV radiation could address gaps in current infection control strategies and provide efficient sterilization of biologics in the biotechnological industry. Here, we demonstrate that femtosecond (fs) laser irradiation of resonant gold nanoparticles (NPs) under conditions that allow for E-field mediated cavitation and shockwave generation achieve an efficient plasmon-enhanced photonic microbial pathogen inactivation. We demonstrate that this NP-enhanced, physical inactivation approach is effective against a diverse group of pathogens, including both enveloped and nonenveloped viruses, and a variety of bacteria and mycoplasma. Photonic inactivation is wavelength-dependent and in the absence of plasmonic enhancement from NPs, negligible levels of microbial inactivation are observed in the near-infrared (NIR) at 800 nm. This changes upon addition of resonant plasmonic NPs, which provide a strong enhancement of inactivation of viral and bacterial contaminants. Importantly, the plasmon-enhanced 800 nm femtosecond (fs)-pulse induced inactivation was selective to pathogens and was obtained without specific targeting of the NPs to the pathogens. No measurable damage was observed for antibodies included as representative biologics under identical conditions.