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Heterogeneous silicon mesostructures for lipid-supported bioelectric interfaces

Nature Materials volume 15, pages 1023–1030 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Silicon-based materials have widespread application as biophysical tools and biomedical devices. Here we introduce a biocompatible and degradable mesostructured form of silicon with multi-scale structural and chemical heterogeneities. The material was synthesized using mesoporous silica as a template through a chemical vapour deposition process. It has an amorphous atomic structure, an ordered nanowire-based framework and random submicrometre voids, and shows an average Young’s modulus that is 2–3 orders of magnitude smaller than that of single-crystalline silicon. In addition, we used the heterogeneous silicon mesostructures to design a lipid-bilayer-supported bioelectric interface that is remotely controlled and temporally transient, and that permits non-genetic and subcellular optical modulation of the electrophysiology dynamics in single dorsal root ganglia neurons. Our findings suggest that the biomimetic expansion of silicon into heterogeneous and deformable forms can open up opportunities in extracellular biomaterial or bioelectric systems.

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Figure 1: Amorphous Si can have multi-scale structural heterogeneity and ordered mesoscale features.
Figure 2: Mesostructured Si has size-dependent chemical heterogeneity.
Figure 3: Mesostructured Si can establish less invasive biointerfaces.
Figure 4: Remotely actuated and lipid-supported bioelectric interface as a dynamic hybrid system.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR FA9550-14-1-0175, FA9550-15-1-0285), the National Science Foundation (NSF CAREER, DMR-1254637; NSF MRSEC, DMR 1420709), the Searle Scholars Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH GM030376), and the University of Chicago Start-up Fund. Atom-probe tomography was performed at the Northwestern University Center for Atom-Probe Tomography (NUCAPT), whose APT was purchased and upgraded with funding from NSF-MRI (DMR-0420532) and ONR-DURIP (N00014-0400798, N00014-0610539, N00014-0910781) grants. NUCAPT is a Research Facility at the Materials Research Center of Northwestern University, supported by the National Science Foundation’s MRSEC programme (grant number DMR-1121262). Instrumentation at NUCAPT was further upgraded by the Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN). This work made use of the JEOL JEM-ARM200CF and JEOL JEM-3010 TEM in the Electron Microscopy Service (Research Resources Center, UIC). The acquisition of the UIC JEOL JEM-ARM200CF was supported by an MRI-R2 grant from the National Science Foundation (DMR-0959470). A portion of this work was performed at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences User Facility under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This research used the resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The authors thank D. Talapin, V. Srivastava, Y. Chen, J. Treger, T. Sun, Q. Guo, J. Jureller and R. N. S. Divan for providing technical support and stimulating discussions.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Yuanwen Jiang, João L. Carvalho-de-Souza and Raymond C. S. Wong: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA

    Yuanwen Jiang, Zhiqiang Luo, Yucai Wang, Luizetta Navrazhnykh, Dara E. Weiss & Bozhi Tian

  2. The James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA

    Yuanwen Jiang, Raymond C. S. Wong, Zhiqiang Luo, Yucai Wang & Bozhi Tian

  3. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA

    João L. Carvalho-de-Souza, Raymond C. S. Wong & Francisco Bezanilla

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

    Dieter Isheim & David N. Seidman

  5. The Northwestern University Center for Atom-Probe Tomography (NUCAPT), Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

    Dieter Isheim & David N. Seidman

  6. The X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA

    Xiaobing Zuo, Vincent De Andrade & Xianghui Xiao

  7. The Research Resources Center, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607, USA

    Alan W. Nicholls

  8. The Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA

    Il Woong Jung

  9. Ben May Department for Cancer Research, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA

    Jiping Yue & Xiaoyang Wu

  10. The Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA

    Di-Jia Liu

  11. The Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA

    Francisco Bezanilla & Bozhi Tian

Authors
  1. Yuanwen Jiang
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Contributions

Y.J. provided material design and synthesis. J.L.C.-d.-S. conducted lipid and neuron experiments Y.J., R.C.S.W., Z.L., D.I., X.Z., A.W.N., I.W.J., D.-J.L., Y.W., V.D.A., X.X., L.N. and D.N.S. performed material characterizations. Y.J., J.Y., R.C.S.W., D.E.W. and X.W. conducted biocompatibility and degradability studies in vitro and in vivo. Y.J. and R.C.S.W. carried out material data analysis. J.L.C.-d.-S., R.C.S.W., Y.J. and L.N. performed lipid and cell data analysis. Y.J. performed the COMSOL simulation. Y.J., R.C.S.W. and B.T. wrote the paper, and received comments and edits from all authors. B.T. and F.B. mentored the research.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Francisco Bezanilla or Bozhi Tian.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Jiang, Y., Carvalho-de-Souza, J., Wong, R. et al. Heterogeneous silicon mesostructures for lipid-supported bioelectric interfaces. Nature Mater 15, 1023–1030 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4673

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