Issue 9, 2020

Monitoring supported lipid bilayers with n-type organic electrochemical transistors

Abstract

Supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) have emerged as powerful model systems to study various membrane-governed cellular events. Conducting polymers are excellent materials to establish electrical communication with SLBs. However, forming SLBs that are defect-free on the existing library of electronic polymer films, which have not been designed to interface lipids, remains a challenge. Moreover, the existing polymers are predominantly p-type conductors, hindering the development of devices that can be superior to current technologies. In this work, we synthesized an n-type semiconducting polymer based on a naphthalene 1,4,5,8 tetracarboxylic diimide bithiophene (NDI-T2) backbone functionalized with bio-inspired, lysine-based side chains (L2). The lysine chains, that are oriented on the surface of the film, facilitated the assembly of the zwitterionic lipid vesicles into an SLB. The n-type polymer also proved to be an ideal channel material for the state-of-the-art bioelectronic transducer, i.e., organic electrochemical transistor (OECT). We used the n-type, accumulation mode OECTs to assess the quality of the SLB as well as to monitor the activity of a pore forming protein integrated into the SLB. Our work marks the first demonstration of a bio-functionalized n-type polymer, specifically designed for interfacing the lipid membrane, alongside the high operational stability in biologically relevant electrolytes and sufficient performance in microscale transistors for biosensing applications.

Graphical abstract: Monitoring supported lipid bilayers with n-type organic electrochemical transistors

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
01 apr 2020
Accepted
11 iyn 2020
First published
11 iyn 2020
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Mater. Horiz., 2020,7, 2348-2358

Monitoring supported lipid bilayers with n-type organic electrochemical transistors

M. Kawan, T. C. Hidalgo, W. Du, A. Pappa, R. M. Owens, I. McCulloch and S. Inal, Mater. Horiz., 2020, 7, 2348 DOI: 10.1039/D0MH00548G

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