For now, cyborgs exist solely in fiction, however the idea is turning into extra believable as science progresses. And now, researchers are reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters that they’ve developed a proof-of-concept method to “tattoo” dwelling cells and tissues with versatile arrays of gold nanodots and nanowires. With additional refinement, this methodology may finally be used to combine sensible units with dwelling tissue for biomedical functions, resembling bionics and biosensing.
Advances in electronics have enabled producers to make built-in circuits and sensors with nanoscale decision. Extra just lately, laser printing and different strategies have made it potential to assemble versatile units that may mould to curved surfaces. However these processes typically use harsh chemical substances, excessive temperatures or stress extremes which are incompatible with dwelling cells. Different strategies are too sluggish or have poor spatial decision. To keep away from these drawbacks, David Gracias, Luo Gu and colleagues needed to develop a unhazardous, high-resolution, lithographic methodology to connect nanomaterials to dwelling tissue and cells.
The crew used nanoimprint lithography to print a sample of nanoscale gold strains or dots on a polymer-coated silicon wafer. The polymer was then dissolved to free the gold nanoarray so it could possibly be transferred to a skinny piece of glass. Subsequent, the gold was functionalized with cysteamine and coated with a hydrogel layer, which, when peeled away, eliminated the array from the glass. The patterned facet of this versatile array/hydrogel layer was coated with gelatin and hooked up to particular person dwell fibroblast cells. Within the ultimate step, the hydrogel was degraded to show the gold sample on the floor of the cells. The researchers used comparable strategies to use gold nanoarrays to sheets of fibroblasts or to rat brains. Experiments confirmed that the arrays had been biocompatible and will information cell orientation and migration.
The researchers say their cost-effective strategy could possibly be used to connect different nanoscale parts, resembling electrodes, antennas and circuits, to hydrogels or dwelling organisms, thereby opening up alternatives for the event of biohybrid supplies, bionic units and biosensors.
