Electrical recording of lipid membrane in a microfluidic device

In this paper, we examined two types of devices for the electrical recording of transmembrane currents: the material used for the electrodes in the first device was agarose gel, and that in the second device was gold. In the first device, we embedded the agarose gel into microfluidic channels, which becomes a ldquosalt-bridgerdquo connecting a micrometer-sized chamber to the external circuit electrically. Next, in the second device, the micrometer-sized chamber was connected to the external microfluidic channel through a gold pattern. As a result, we expect that the gold sheet connection device will more significantly contribute to membrane ion-channel study.