SNM: Thermal Drawing of Fibers with Individually Addressable Nanoelectrode Array for Cellular Electrophysiology

可单独寻址的纳米电极阵列光纤是芯部具有连续金属纳米线的光纤。它们有许多用途，如薄膜电阻率探头、细胞电生理学和神经电信号记录器。预计全球商业市场将达到数十亿美元，对此类纤维的需求十分旺盛。尽管这些纤维的大量生产将带来巨大的经济和技术影响，但它们的可靠和可扩展制造的成功一直是有限的。这一可伸缩纳米制造(SNM)奖将克服以完全不依赖于光刻的方式扩大此类纤维制造的基本限制，从而以非常低的成本实现。该奖项将产生纳米制造、生物医学、电子学和材料科学方面的知识，并帮助培养和教育纳米制造领域的未来工程师和科学家。通过这个项目，未被充分代表的学生将获得研究经验，这将有助于他们过渡到行业或进修。计划中的面向高中、工业界和普通科学界的外展活动将激发人们对纳米技术和纳米制造的认识和兴趣。该奖项支持一种新颖的纳米复合材料方法，以应对大规模制造嵌入长金属纳米线的纤维的重大挑战。金属熔体的低粘度所引起的流体不稳定性以及与非晶态包层材料的较大界面能是其根本制约因素。热拉金属丝的直径也存在一个基本尺寸限制，低于该限制，金属丝就会变得不稳定，其尺寸极难控制，如果不是不可能的话。该团队将进行研究，以克服基本限制和技术障碍，以实现使用可单独寻址的纳米电极阵列对纤维进行可靠的可扩展纳米制造。这项研究将解决细胞电生理学中一个未得到满足的需求，特别是对基于细胞的分析进行革命性的改革。研究内容包括纳米电极阵列的理论材料和功能设计、金属纳米线的热拉伸可伸缩纳米制造、纳米电极阵列的原位观察和非原位表征以及纳米电极细胞检测平台的开发和验证。

Individually addressable nanoelectrode array fibers are fibers with continuous metal nanowires in their core. They have many uses such as probes for thin-film resistivity, cellular electrophysiology and neural electrical signal recorders. There is a strong demand for such fibers with a predicted global commercial market of billions of dollars. Despite the huge economic and technological impact that high-volume production of these fibers would bring, success in their reliable and scalable manufacturing has been limited. This Scalable NanoManufacturing (SNM) award will overcome the fundamental limits for scaling up the manufacturing of such fibers in a totally lithography-independent and, thus, very low-cost manner. This award will generate knowledge in nanomanufacturing, biomedicine, electronics, and materials science and help nurture and educate future engineers and scientists in the area of nanomanufacturing. Through this project, underrepresented students will gain research experiences, which will help their transition into industry or advanced studies. The planned outreach activities to high school, industry and general scientific community will stimulate awareness and interest in nanotechnology and nanomanufacturing.This award supports a novel nanocomposite approach to tackle grand challenges for scale-up manufacturing of fibers embedded with long metal nanowires. The fundamental constraints are the fluid instability induced by the low viscosity of molten metals and the large interfacial energy with the amorphous cladding materials. There also exists a fundamental size limit to the diameter of thermally drawn metal wires below which the metal wires become inherently unstable and their size extremely difficult to control, if not impossible. The team will conduct research to overcome the fundamental limits and technical barriers to enable a reliable scalable nanomanufacturing of fibers with individually addressable nanoelectrode arrays. The research will address an unmet need in cellular electrophysiology and specifically revolutionize cell-based assays. The research includes theoretical material and functional design for nanoelectrode arrays, scalable nanomanufacturing of fibers with metal nanowires through thermal drawing, in-situ observation and ex-situ characterization of nanoelectrode arrays, and development and validation of nanoelectrode-enabled cell-based assay platform.