Optically Triggered Melting of DNA on Individual Semiconducting Carbon Nanotubes

Optical excitation of nanostructures is known to induce local heating, a phenomenon that has been intensely exploited for drug release, gene delivery, cancer thermotherapy, and energy harvesting. However, the effect is typically small requiring collective heating of a large concentration or aggregates of particles. Herein, we show that optical excitation of individual semiconducting single‐walled carbon nanotubes triggers strongly localized heating adequate to melt non‐covalently attached double‐stranded oligonucleotides in solution. In contrast to conventional thermal dehybridization, this optically triggered DNA melting occurs at a solution temperature that is 22 °C lower than the DNA melting temperature. This unexpectedly large localized optical heating effect provides important new insights to design selective optical nanoheaters at the single particle level.