An organic transistor-based system for reference-less electrophysiological monitoring of excitable cells.
In the last four decades, substantial advances have been done in the understanding of the electrical behavior of excitable cells. From the introduction in the early 70's of the Ion Sensitive Field Effect Transistor (ISFET), a lot of effort has been put in the development of more and more performing transistor-based devices to reliably interface electrogenic cells such as, for example, cardiac myocytes and neurons. However, depending on the type of application, the electronic devices used to this aim face several problems like the intrinsic rigidity of the materials (associated with foreign body rejection reactions), lack of transparency and the presence of a reference electrode. Here, an innovative system based on a novel kind of organic thin film transistor (OTFT), called organic charge modulated FET (OCMFET), is proposed as a flexible, transparent, reference-less transducer of the electrical activity of electrogenic cells. The exploitation of organic electronics in interfacing the living matters will open up new perspectives in the electrophysiological field allowing us to head toward a modern era of flexible, reference-less, and low cost probes with high-spatial and high-temporal resolution for a new generation of in-vitro and in-vivo monitoring platforms.
1] University of Cagliari - Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Piazza d'Armi, 09123 Cagliari, Italy [2] University of Genova - Dept. of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering, Via Opera Pia 13, 16145 Genova, Italy.
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Spanu
University of Cagliari - Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Piazza d'Armi, 09123 Cagliari, Italy.
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Lai
University of Cagliari - Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Piazza d'Armi, 09123 Cagliari, Italy.
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Cosseddu
University of Genova - Dept. of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering, Via Opera Pia 13, 16145 Genova, Italy.
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Tedesco
University of Genova - Dept. of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering, Via Opera Pia 13, 16145 Genova, Italy.
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Martinoia
1] University of Cagliari - Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Piazza d'Armi, 09123 Cagliari, Italy [2] CNR - Institute of Nanoscience, Via Campi 213/A, 41125 Modena, Italy.
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Bonfiglio
D055664:Electrochemical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D055724:Electrophysiological Phenomena; D032383:Myocytes, Cardiac / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D009930:Organic Chemicals / Q000737:chemistry*
D009930:Organic Chemicals