Ultra-Sharp Nanowire Arrays Natively Permeate, Record, and Stimulate Intracellular Activity in Neuronal and Cardiac Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces scalable ultra-sharp nanowire arrays capable of long-term, high-fidelity intracellular recordings in neuronal and cardiac tissues, enabling advanced electrophysiological studies and drug screening.

Contribution

The development of individually addressable, ultra-sharp nanowire arrays that maintain intracellular recording quality over days is a novel advancement.

Findings

Large action potential amplitudes indicating intracellular access

Stable recordings over several days without amplitude decay

Validation through microscopy, pharmacology, and electrical interventions

Abstract

Intracellular access with high spatiotemporal resolution can enhance our understanding of how neurons or cardiomyocytes regulate and orchestrate network activity, and how this activity can be affected with pharmacology or other interventional modalities. Nanoscale devices often employ electroporation to transiently permeate the cell membrane and record intracellular potentials, which tend to decrease rapidly to extracellular potential amplitudes with time. Here, we report innovative scalable, vertical, ultra-sharp nanowire arrays that are individually addressable to enable long-term, native recordings of intracellular potentials. We report large action potential amplitudes that are indicative of intracellular access from 3D tissue-like networks of neurons and cardiomyocytes across recording days and that do not decrease to extracellular amplitudes for the duration of the recording of several minutes. Our findings are validated with cross-sectional microscopy, pharmacology, and electrical interventions. Our experiments and simulations demonstrate that individual electrical addressability of nanowires is necessary for high-fidelity intracellular electrophysiological recordings. This study advances our understanding of and control over high-quality multi-channel intracellular recordings, and paves the way toward predictive, high-throughput, and low-cost electrophysiological drug screening platforms.