Fast Formation of Lipid Bilayer Membranes for Simultaneous Analysis of Molecular Transport Using Parylene Coated Chips

Abstract

Artificial lipid bilayers are an essential tool to investigate channel forming proteins. A particular challenge is to study antibiotic uptake through bacterial porins requiring low volume and parallelization. Here, we present a lipid bilayer silicon chip having a Parylene-C coated silicon nitride membrane with different aperture sizes. The Parylene-C allows very fast lipid bilayer membrane fabrication, 30 to 130 s. The realization-success is very high and an average lifetime of at least 9 h was established. Furthermore, a 3D-printed holder is realized where parallel assembly of the chips, including fluid inlets for the pipetting robot, is demonstrated.

Keywords

• Parylene coating
• 3D printed holder
• lipid bilayer chips, microfluidics, silicon nitride membrane