Silicon nanowires to detect electric signals from living cells

The ability to merge electronic devices with biological systems at the cellular scale is an interesting perspective. Potential applications span from investigating the bio-electric signals in excitable (and non-excitable) cells with an insofar-unreached resolution to plan next-generation therapeutic devices. Semiconductor nanowires are well suited for achieving this goal because of their intrinsic size and wide range of possible configurations. However, production of such nanoscale electrodes can be pricey, time-consuming and affected by poor compatibility with the Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor integrated circuits (CMOS-IC) process standards. To take a step forward, we introduced a new method to fabricate small, high-density Silicon Nanowires (SiNWs) with a fast, relatively inexpensive and low-temperature (200 °C) process compatible with CMOS-IC standards, thus theoretically allowing on-site amplification of bioelectric signals from living cells in tight contact. Here, we report our preliminary data showing the biocompatibility of SiNWs, as a necessary step to produce a compact device providing super-resolved descriptions of bioelectric waveforms captured from the subcellular to the network level. (paper)