Industry Intelligence

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)researchers have developed a versatile hybrid platform that uses lipid-coated nanowires to build prototype bionanoelectronic devices. Mingling biological components in electronic circuits could enhance biosensing and diagnostic tools, advance neural prosthetics such as cochlear implants, and could even increase the efficiency of future computers.

While modern communication devices rely on electric fields and currents to carry the flow of information, biological systems are much more complex. They use an arsenal of membrane receptors, channels and pumps to control signal transduction that is unmatched by even the most powerful computers. For example, conversion of sound waves into nerve impulses is a very complicated process, yet the human ear has no trouble performing it.

“Electronic circuits that use these complex biological components could become much more efficient,” says Aleksandr Noy, the LLNL lead scientist on the project. While earlier research has attempted to integrate biological systems with microelectronics, none has gotten to the point of seamless material-level incorporation. “But with the creation of even smaller nanomaterials that are comparable to the size of biological molecules, we can integrate the systems at an even more localised level,” Noy says.

To create the bionanoelectronic platform, the LLNL team turned to lipid membranes, which are ubiquitous in biological cells. These membranes form a stable, self-healing, and virtually impenetrable barrier to ions and small molecules.

The researchers incorporated lipid bilayer membranes into silicon nanowire transistors by covering the nanowire with a continuous lipid bilayer shell that forms a barrier between the nanowire surface and solution species.

“This ‘shielded wire’ configuration allows us to use membrane pores as the only pathway for the ions to reach the nanowire,” Noy says. “This is how we can use the nanowire device to monitor specific transport and also to control the membrane protein.”