Publication date: 28th June 2024
Action Potentials (APs) of excitable cells like cardiac cells, skeletal muscle cells and neurons encode crucial information about the cells physiology and physiological state. Most of electrical tools available at present to probe APs are either invasive or require complex manufacturing processes. Minimally invasive and high-throughput recording of intracellular action potentials in electrogenic cells with scalable technologies is in high demand. With the aim of enabling a cost-effective, non-invasive probing platform based on devices that can be easily fabricated and processed from solution with large-area printing techniques, we propose planar Electrolyte Gated Field-Effect Transistors (EGFETs) based on printed polymer semiconductors. Remarkably, despite the planar geometry of the device, we could demonstrate the spontaneous recording of intracellular APs of human induced pluripotent stem cells derived cardiomyocytes. The simplicity of the device combined with the high signal to noise ratio opens up new opportunities for low-cost, reliable, and flexible biosensors and arrays for high quality parallel recording of cellular action potentials.