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Updated: Nov 26, 2025
Optical Control of Living Cells Electrical Activity by Conjugated Polymers
Published on: January 28, 2016
Colour-sensitive conjugated polymer inkjet-printed pixelated artificial retina model studied via a bio-hybrid
Manuela Ciocca1,2, Pavlos Giannakou2, Paolo Mariani1
1Department of Electronic Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via del Politecnico 1, Rome, Italy.
Abstract:
In recent years, organic electronic materials have been shown to be a promising tool, even transplanted in vivo, for transducing light stimuli to non-functioning retinas. Here we developed a bio-hybrid optoelectronic device consisting of patterned organic polymer semiconductors interfaced with an electrolyte solution in a closed sandwich architecture in order to study the photo-response of photosensitive semiconducting layers or patterns in an environment imitating biological extracellular fluids. We demonstrate an artificial retina model composed of on an array of 42,100 pixels made of three different conjugated polymers via inkjet printing with 110 pixels/mm2 packing density. Photo-sensing through three-colour pixelation allows to resolve incoming light spectrally and spatially. The compact colour sensitive optoelectronic device represents an easy-to-handle photosensitive platform for the study of the photo response of artificial retina systems.
