Alberto Salleo1
Stanford University1
An attractive feature of polymeric mixed conductors is their ability to swell in water thus forming a soft interface amenable to interacting with biological matter. Further, their ability to transduce ionic fluxes into electronic fluxes opens opportunities in sensing. Indeed, one can imagine combining the specificity and sensitivity of biological matter with the functionality of semiconductors in a single hybrid device. In this talk I will describe our work on integrating lipid bilayers, either synthetic or obtained from cell walls to sense a variety of environmental cues. For instance, we demonstrate specific sensing of toxins and viral fusion as well as the detection of opening and closing of selected ion channel. I will describe the surface treatments needed to enable such hybrid interface to retain its functionality as well as modeling of the device response and its limitations.