Porous Polyethylene Terephthalate Nanotemplate Electrodes for Sensitive Intracellular Recording of Action Potentials

New strategies for intracellular electrophysiology break the spatiotemporal limitation of the action potential and lead a notable advance in the investigation of electrically excitable cells and their network. Although successful applications of intracellular recording have been achieved by 3D micro/nanodevices, complex micro/nanofabrication processes preclude the progress of extensive applications. We address this challenge by introducing porous polyethylene terephthalate (PET) membrane to develop a new type of nanotemplate electrode. This nanotemplate electrode is manufactured following a fabrication process on a porous PET membrane by atomic layer deposition. The 3D nanotemplate electrodes afford intracellular access to cardiomyocytes to report intracellular-like action potentials. These controllable nanotemplate electrodes exhibit sensitive and prolonged intracellular recordings of action potentials compared with free-growing 3D nanoelectrodes. This study indicates that the optimized structure of the nanoelectrode significantly promotes the performance of intracellular recording to assess electrophysiology in the fields of cardiology and neuroscience at an action potential level.