Cell membranes pose one of the greatest barriers to the delivery of drugs, proteins, DNA and other molecules into cells and tissues. The ability of ultrasound to transiently disrupt these barriers in living cells could provide an important tool, especially for delivery of macromolecular drugs or other compounds requiring access to the cytosol. The relatively large size of ultrasound-created disruptions indicates that this method could be used to deliver a broad range of compounds, such as drugs, proteins, DNA and RNA, etc.

The advance of micro-fabrication techniques enabled the development of novel bio-chip being able to catch, and study the structure, function and characteristic of cells in single cell level, which are concerned with our understanding of the nature and ourselves.

This thesis is aimed towards development of a novel micro-sized ultrasound transducer based bio-chip. Besides being able to catch the single cells, it can generate a confined and low-power ultrasound wave to facilitate the cell intake of small particles, especially for drug molecules. The innovative device fabrication process is addressed in detail. Quantum dots are adopted as the testing agent to conduct test on living cell. The cell intake of quantum dots of both natural diffusion and ultrasound facilitation processes are compared and quantified. A series of ultrasound conditions are tested. It was approved that by controlling the size of the transducer, power and frequency of the ultrasound wave the transducer emits, acoustic wave can be precisely targeted on each individual single cell, therefore to facilitate the cell intake of small particles without noticeable impact on other neighbor cells.