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Engineered neuronal circuits shaped and interfaced with carbon nanotube microelectrode arrays

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Abstract

Standard micro-fabrication techniques which were originally developed to fabricate semi-conducting electronic devices were inadvertently found to be adequate for bio-chip fabrication suited for applications such as stimulation and recording from neurons in-vitro as well as in-vivo. However, cell adhesion to conventional micro-chips is poor and chemical treatments are needed to facilitate the interaction between the device surface and the cells. Here we present novel carbon nanotube-based electrode arrays composed of cell-alluring carbon nanotube (CNT) islands. These play a double role of anchoring neurons directly and only onto the electrode sites (with no need for chemical treatments) and facilitating high fidelity electrical interfacing–recording and stimulation. This method presents an important step towards building nano-based neurochips of precisely engineered networks. These neurochips can provide unique platform for studying the activity patterns of ordered networks as well as for testing the effects of network damage and methods of network repair.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Inna Brainis for her technical assistance and Moti-Ben David, Itsik Kalifa, Itay Baruchi and Nadav Raichman for their assistance and useful discussions. This project was supported in part by a grant from the Israeli Science Foundation (1138/04) and by the Tauber Fund at Tel Aviv University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical Engineering, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel

    M. Shein, A. Greenbaum, T. Gabay, R. Sorkin, M. David-Pur & Y. Hanein

  2. School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel

    E. Ben-Jacob

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  1. M. Shein
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  2. A. Greenbaum
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  3. T. Gabay
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  4. R. Sorkin
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  5. M. David-Pur
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  6. E. Ben-Jacob
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  7. Y. Hanein
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Correspondence to Y. Hanein.

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Shein, M., Greenbaum, A., Gabay, T. et al. Engineered neuronal circuits shaped and interfaced with carbon nanotube microelectrode arrays. Biomed Microdevices 11, 495–501 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-008-9255-7

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