Enhanced parylene-C fluorescence as a visual marker for neuronal electrophysiology applications. Issue 23 (8th November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhang, Lingqian; Wei, Mengping; Shao, Linbo; Li, Mingli; Dai, Wangzhi; Cui, Yaxuan; Li, Zhihong; Zhang, Chen; Wang, Wei
• Is Part Of: Lab on a chip. Volume 18:Issue 23(2018)
• Page Start: 3539
• Page End: 3549
• Publication Date: 2018-11-08
• Subjects: Miniature electronic equipment -- Periodicals; Combinatorial chemistry -- Periodicals; Biotechnology -- Periodicals; 543.0813
• DOI: 10.1039/c8lc00804c
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1473-0197

Abstract

Abstract : This work presented a simple annealing method to significantly enhance the fluorescence of parylene-C and achieve sufficient intensity as a visual marker. Abstract : Parylene-C is a popular polymer material in biomedical applications, with excellent physicochemical properties and microfabrication capability. Like many aromatic polymers, parylene-C also has autofluorescence, which was usually taken as a negative background noise in biomedical detection studies. However, the fluorescence intensity of thin-film (<1 μm) parylene-C was relatively weak, which may be a big limitation in visualization. In this work, we reported a simple annealing method to significantly enhance the fluorescence and achieve sufficient intensity as a visual marker. We studied the behaviors and mechanisms of the enhanced parylene-C fluorescence, then verified the feasibility and reliability of parylene-C for preparing fluorescent pipettes in targeted neuronal electrophysiology, where fluorescent guidance was strongly needed. The powerful parylene-C fabrication technique enables a precisely-controlled conformal coating along with a mass production capability, which further resulted in high-quality electrophysiological recordings of both cultured hippocampal neurons and acute hippocampal brain slices. Moreover, the enhanced parylene-C fluorescence can also be applied in more general biological operations, such as designable fluorescent micro-patterns for visualization in broader biomedical fields.