Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Carbon Nanotubes as Electrically Conductive
Cell Growth Substrates
In the following, we review some electron transport properties of CNTs. Although
simplifi ed, these considerations are probably suffi cient to address the phenomena at
the interface between a (mesoscopic) dense random dispersion of CNTs and the
membrane of a neuron, as in Fig.
3
(see Mattson et al.
2000
; Lovat et al.
2005
; Liopo
et al.
2006
; Mazzatenta et al.
2007
) .
In the case of a mesoscopic mixture of CNTs, randomly deposited or patterned
on a planar substrate employed as a cell-growth surface, an intricate
meshwork
of
Fig. 3
Scanning electron microscopy images of cultured neurons growing on CNTs. At very high
magnifi cation (
a
), the intricate structure of the nanotube meshwork obtained from the CNT disper-
sion is apparent. Neurons grow and develop ex vivo on such a substrate for several weeks, reorga-
nizing into functional networks (
b-d
). At the subcellular level (
e-f
), tight contacts between cell
membranes and individual nanotube bundles are clearly identifi ed, suggesting a very intimate
biophysical coupling. Scale bar: (
a
) 1 m m, (
b
) 200 m m, (
c
) 25 m m, (
d
) 10 m m, (
e
) 2 m m, (
f
) 450 nm.
© 2007 Society for Neuroscience, reproduced with permission from Mazzatenta et al. (
2007
)
