Pulsed laser (782 nm) on gold nanoparticles incorporated into cells. During the first 10 nanoseconds some melting of the surface without bulk heating of the gold nanoparticles occurs, and this vaporizes the fluid around the gold nanoparticles. The creation of a nanobubble that rapidly expands and collapses, with enough energy to destroy a cell, is dependent on the number of gold spheres in the cluster, with the severity increasing as the cluster size increases.