Electrically Controlling The Environmental Interactions of Neurons Cultured on Graphene

Samantha M. D’az, Justin Stadlbauer, Dr. Kurtis D. CantleyDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Boise State University

1. Introduction• Neural interfacing is the environment where

the nervous system in the human body interacts with a

• A current problem is that the devices don’t interact well with the nervous

• Silicon is the current standard for neural interfacing

⁻ They are extremely rigid•Graphene is thought to be a better

alternative⁻ Not much research on it in the body⁻ Research that has been done has

contradicting

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

⁻ Fig. 1 and 2 show the structures of graphene and silicon respectively

The project described was supported by Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Grants #P20GM103408 and P20GM109095. We also acknowledge support from The Biomolecular Research Center at Boise State.

7. Acknowledgements

[1] Hatsopoulos NG, Donoghue JP. The Science of Neural Interface Systems.Annual review of neuroscience. 2009;32:249-266. doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.051508.135241.

[2] A.M. Pinto, I.C. Gonçalves, F.D. Magalhães Graphene-based materials biocompatibility: a review Colloids Surf B, 111C (2013), pp. 188–202 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfb.2013.05.022

• Our hypothesis is that graphene will be a better material for neural interfacing than silicon

⁻We will test this by measuring cellular properties on graphene samples

• We have been working on the set up for our experiment

Fig. 3 Fig. 4

⁻Fig. 3 and 4 show the microscope and cage we will use to perform all of our experiments. The cage has anti-vibration measures in place and can close to help us see the fluorescence of the cells

2. Goals

3. Current Work• With the increase in ways to keep the cells

alive, we will be able to get more measurements with one set of cells

• We have been able to show that the fluid and the pipette tip form an RC circuit

• We will take measurements and eventually measure cell interactions with graphene samples

• We will test how nanoparticles change how cells and graphene interact

4. Discussion/Conclusion

5. Future Work

6. References

Delivers new solution to reservoir

Takes old solution out of reservoir

Fluidic System

Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7

• The cells are in a salt solution that is put inside a 3D printed reservoir (Fig. 5)

• We have two syringe pumps that refresh the solution ⁻We created a LabVIEW program to control these pumps (Fig. 6 & 7)

Heating Pad

Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10• In order to keep cells alive they must be kept at 37

⁻We achieve this by attaching a heating pad to the chuck that the sample sits on (Fig. 8 & 9)

⁻We have a LabVIEW program that shows the reading of the heating pad (Fig. 10)

Measurement

Fig. 11

• This is the measurement from an attempt to patch a cell(Fig. 11)