Flexible Sensing Platform Based on Negative Pressure Triboelectric Nanogenerators and Microelectrode Array for...

Monitoring both the mechanical activity and electrophysiological signals of cardiomyocytes is crucial for advancing cardiology research and optimizing drug screening protocols. While triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have been widely employed for strain detection in health monitoring, their application in accurately capturing the subtle mechanical beating of cardiomyocytes at the cellular level remains largely unexplored. In this study, we develop a TENG-based pressure sensor combined with a microelectrode array (MEA) as flexible sensing platform (TENG-MEA), designed to simultaneously record mechanical beats and field potentials (FP) from a monolayer of cardiomyocytes, for extracting critical physiological parameters. The TENG-MEA exhibits high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) of 43.1 dB for recording of mechanical signals and 41.0 dB for recording of electrical signals. It possesses remarkable stability, capable of enduring over 3,000,000 contact-separation cycles. The platform possesses 3-5 μm microcolumn structures for enhancing the frictional interface, achieving a detection threshold of <1 Pa and sensitivity of 1.146 pA/Pa. By harnessing the synergistic effects of the negative pressure architecture, the culture medium, and the microcolumn array design, the TENG-MEA effectively isolates frictional layers at the microscale, facilitating detection of cardiomyocytes' beating activities. Moreover, due to good mechanical properties and biocompatibility of the device, the platform maintains stable signal recordings over a 20-day cardiomyocyte culture period, with signal-to-noise ratio fluctuations kept below 9.3% across multiple reuses. This platform offers promising opportunity for studying the coupling of electrophysiology and mechanical contraction in cardiac research.