AVS 56th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Biomaterial Interfaces Thursday Sessions
       Session BI-ThP

Paper BI-ThP19
Biomimetic Metallic Electrodes for Intracellular Electrical Measurements

Thursday, November 12, 2009, 6:00 pm, Room Hall 3

Session: Biomaterial Interfaces Poster Session II (Arrays, Sensing, Micro/Nanofabrication, SPM)
Presenter: P. Verma, Stanford University
Authors: P. Verma, Stanford University
N. Melosh, Stanford University
Correspondent: Click to Email
Interfacing living matter to electronics with the ability to monitor and deliver spatio-temporal signals to cells or cell networks is promising for various fundamental biophysical studies and also for applications such as high resolution neural prosthetics, on-chip electrically addressed artificial neural networks and arrayed on chip patch-clamps. Developing an inorganic nanostructure that can specifically and non-destructively incorporate into biological membranes is the key to such an interface. We report an approach towards this interface by functionalizing a nanoscale metallic post to mimic a transmembrane protein to directly insert into the lipid membrane and form a tight seal. These post-electrodes were formed by evaporation and lift-off onto conductive bottom electrodes, with 5-10 nm thick hydrophobic bands around the edge of the post formed by molecular self assembly. We recently reported AFM measurements of these posts inserting into lipid bilayers and showed that different molecular functionalizations adhered within the hydrophobic lipid core with different strengths depending on their molecular mobility. Here we describe nanoscale electrical measurements with these post-electrodes on red blood cells to determine the leakage current at the electrode-membrane interface.