Intra/extracellular nanoprobe arrays for electrical and chemical nanoscale measurements of neurons

我们开发了平面外、高纵横比、纳米级电极尖端微线阵列，用于穿透式、多部位、纳米级生物传感器。通过对气-液-固生长的硅微丝的尖端进行各向同性硅刻蚀，形成了纳米级的尖端丝。在用金属包覆导线后，通过三维集成工艺，只有纳米尖端部分可以从周围的外壳(例如二氧化硅和对二甲苯)暴露出来。作为一种器件应用，我们展示了聚苯乙烯纳米颗粒在溶液中的捕获，使用了制作的金-纳米针尖线阵列。此外，这些被捕获的纳米颗粒可以被注入到软材料(明胶)中，展示了纳米颗粒的多点广域批量深度注射。此外，我们还利用含有黄色荧光蛋白(YFP)基因的质粒，对单个人胚胎肾细胞(HEK293)进行了多点/批次和定位的DNA转移。通过使用纳米尖端微线阵列，也可以对大脑切片和大脑皮层等厚样品进行深区域纳米级的电学测量，有望成为神经科学未来的一种强大设备。

We developed out-of-plane, high aspect ratio, nanoscale electrode tipped microwire arrays for applications to penetrating, multisite, nanoscale biological sensors. A nanoscale tipped wire is formed with isotropic silicon etching to the tip of a vapor-liquid-solid grown silicon microwire. After coating the wire with a metal, only the nanotip section can be exposed from the surrounding outer shell(e. g., silicon dioxide and parylene) by three-dimensional integration processes. As a device application, we demonstrate the trapping of polystyrene nanoparticles in a solution using a fabricated gold-nanotip wire array. Moreover, these trapped nanoparticles can be injected into a soft material(gelatin), demonstrating a multi-site wide-area batch depth injection of nanoparticles. Also, we demonstrated multipoint/batch and localized DNA transfers into individual human embryonic kidney cells(HEK293) with plasmid containing yellow fluorescent protein(YFP) gene. Deep area electrical nanoscale measurements for thick samples such as brain slices as well as cortices would also be possible by using the nanotip microwire arrays, promising a powerful device for the future of neuroscience.