Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik

HL 66: ZnO-based Devices

HL 66.3: Talk

Friday, March 26, 2010, 10:45–11:00, H17

ZnO-based On-Chip Devices for Cell Potential Measurement — •F. Klüpfel, A. Lajn, H. Frenzel, H. von Wenckstern, G. Biehne, H. Hochmuth, M. Lorenz, and M. Grundmann — Universität Leipzig, Fakultät für Physik und Geowissenschaften, Abteilung Halbleiterphysik, Linnéstr. 5, 04103 Leipzig

External stimulation causes nerve cells to change their membrane potential. Measuring these electric cell activities is important to improve the understanding of nerve cell communication and has been demonstrated using multi-transistor arrays based on silicon technology [1]. However these devices do not allow transmission microscopy and thus complicate the determination of the cell locations during electric measurements. The development of such structures on transparent substrates like glass or sapphire promises simultaneous recording of cell potential changes and visual observation. We use a chip with transistors based on the transparent semiconductor ZnO grown by pulsed laser deposition and gold electrodes to contact the cells. Our metal-semiconductor field effect transistors (MESFETs) with reactively sputtered AgO Schottky gate contacts are already described in [2] and outperform the amplification properties of ZnO-based metal-insulator-semiconductor field effect transistors by far, making them most suitable for this purpose. In this talk the electrical properties of the MESFETs as well as their applicability for cell potential measurements will be discussed.

[1] A. Lambacher et al., Appl. Phys. A 79, 1607-1611 (2004)

[2] H. Frenzel et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 92, 192108 (2008)