Cell manipulations and cell surgeries are key techniques in biotechnology today. Micro/nanorobots integrated on a microfluidic chip (on-chip robot) are a promising technology for cell manipulations and cell surgeries because of their operator skill independency and robustness for external environments. These features enable high-throughput cell manipulations and cell surgeries on a microfluidic chip. However, it is difficult to apply previous on-chip robots for small cells of order ≈ 10 \bm μ m because the manipulation or surgery probes of those robots are a few micrometers in size. This size has been restricted by their fabrication, employing a standard mask lithography process. We fabricated on-chip robots of nanometer size by femtosecond laser exposure (nanorobots). The processing resolutions were 270 nm (linewidth) and 600 nm (thickness). Furthermore, our fabrication technique enabled the nanorobot to have a hybrid structure integrating functional nanomaterials (hybrid nanorobot). By integrating the various functional nanomaterials on the nanorobot, we can create a new function for the nanorobot. In this study, we fabricated a hybrid nanorobot with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) of high photothermal efficiency. We demonstrated a single-cell puncture with this nanorobot by irradiating the CNTs with an infrared laser and generating heat at that point. Additionally, we demonstrated an optical manipulation of the nanorobot that makes it possible to perform a cell puncture with high spatial flexibility and high positioning accuracy.

We developed fabrication and manipulation of hybrid nanorobots by 3D nano exposure and optical tweezers. Hybrid nanorobot is composed of photoresist and silicon nanowire. The robot is fabricated by femtosecond laser exposure and is connected to the glass substrate by a micropillar. The processing resolutions of the femtosecond laser exposure are 270 nm (line width) and 600 nm (thickness), respectively. The robot is released by cutting of the pillar by ablation with femtosecond laser. Release time is within four minutes. The released robot is manipulated by holographic optical tweezers (HOT). We succeeded in high-speed manipulation of the robot using HOT (transport speed: 100 μm/s, rotation speed: 1140 deg/s). The robot can be fabricated by incorporating temperature indicator to the robot body and inserting a silicon nanowire to the probe. The robot can be used as a thermal sensor by measuring temperature change from the probe to the robot body because silicon nanowire has high thermal conductivity (168 W/m·K). In this paper, we demonstrated fabrication, on-demand release, and manipulation of the robot in a solution. We also demonstrated temperature calibration and measurement to confirm the effectiveness of the temperature sensor.