Control of Bioelectricity Using Bipolar Nanoelectrodes—A New Bioelectronic Tool

The merging of electronics with biology at the nanoscale gives rise to new opportunities to modulate cellular behaviour. We present an assertion that nano-bipolar electrode technology can play a part in this by enabling methods to modulate cellular-electrical communication. To date, nanobipolar electrodes have not been utilised in cells. In a first, we present an impedimetric method and fluorescent data that demonstrate nano-bipolar electrodes placed within an electric field become polarised enabling intracellular based redox reactions to be modulated on-demand. We also now know faradaic bioelectrical circuits including trans plasma membrane electron transport underpin cell dysfunction. Therefore, the ability to control such circuits may give rise to new ways to control underlying biology and disease. Towards this vision, we use membrane-embedded carbon nanotube (CNTs) as bipolar nanoelectrodes and show we can control electron flow with externally applied electric fields across biological membranes. New mechanistic insight into this newly described phenomenon at the nanoscale is given. The results that will discuss give rise to a new method to modulate cell behaviour via wireless control of electron transfer.