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纤维是在其芯中具有连续金属纳米线的纤维。它们有许多用途，如薄膜电阻率探针，细胞电生理学和神经电信号记录器。对这种纤维的需求很大，预计全球商业市场将达到数十亿美元。尽管这些纤维的大批量生产将带来巨大的经济和技术影响，但其可靠和可扩展的制造成功有限。这项可扩展纳米制造（SNM）奖将克服以完全独立于光刻的方式扩大此类纤维制造的基本限制，因此成本非常低。该奖项将产生纳米制造，生物医学，电子和材料科学的知识，并帮助培养和教育未来的工程师和科学家在纳米制造领域。通过这个项目，代表性不足的学生将获得研究经验，这将有助于他们过渡到行业或高级研究。计划中的高中、工业和一般科学界的推广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巨大挑战。基本的限制是由熔融金属的低粘度和与非晶覆层材料的大界面能引起的流体不稳定性。还存在对热拉制金属线的直径的基本尺寸限制，低于该尺寸限制，金属线变得固有地不稳定，并且它们的尺寸即使不是不可能的，也极难控制。该团队将进行研究，以克服基本限制和技术障碍，从而实现具有可单独寻址纳米电极阵列的纤维的可靠可扩展纳米制造。该研究将解决细胞电生理学中未满足的需求，特别是彻底改变基于细胞的测定。该研究包括纳米电极阵列的理论材料和功能设计，通过热拉伸可扩展的金属纳米线纤维纳米制造，纳米电极阵列的原位观察和非原位表征，以及纳米电极使能的基于细胞的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.