Ultraviolet diffraction limited nanosurgery of live biological tissues

A laser nanodissection system for in vivo and in situ biological tissues is presented. A pulsed laser beam operating at a wavelength of 355 nm enables diffraction limited dissection, providing an optimal tool for intracellular nanosurgery. Coupled into a conventional inverted microscope and scanned across a field of up to 100x100 mum(2), this optical nanoscalpel performs in vivo photoablation and plasma-induced ablation inside organisms ranging from intracellular organelles to embryos. The system allows the use of conventional microscopy contrasts and methods, fast dissection with up to 1000 shots per second, and simultaneous dissection and imaging. This article outlines an efficient implementation with a small number of components and reports an improvement of this state of the art of plasma-induced ablation technique over previous studies, with a ratio of plasma volume to beam focal volume of 5.2. This offers, e.g., the possibility of writing information directly at the sample location by plasma glass nanopatterning. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.