Bioelectronic light-gated transistors with biologically tunable performance

The use of a similar biological regulation mechanism in a light-powered bioelectronic device based on a 1D lipid bilayer device architecture. In these devices, a membrane protein resides within the lipid bilayer that covers a nanowire channel of a SiNW FET. The device platform was based on a microfabricated SiNW FET in which a single nanowire was clamped between a pair of source and drain electrodes insulated from the solution by a protective photoresist layer. Microfluidic channel filled with a buffer solution covered the active area of the chip. This configuration allowed fusing proteoliposomes onto the SiNW surface to create a continuous lipid bilayer that preserved the protein functionality. results show that ionophore molecules, coassembled with the membrane protein, upregulate and downregulate the device output by modulating the lipid membrane potential and altering the specific ion permeability of the membrane.