Nonlinear current response of micro electroporation and resealing dynamics for human cancer cells

This paper presents a novel method to measure the dynamic process of membrane permeability during electroporation (EP) on microchips for human cancer cells. Micro EP chips with three-dimensional gold electrodes accommodating a single cell in between were fabricated with a modified electroplating process. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) was carried out with an electrochemistry analyzer on micro EP chips and a nonlinear equivalent circuit model was proposed to describe the dynamic response of the whole system. Using such a method, micro EP current was isolated from undesired leakage current to study the corresponding electroporation dynamics under different input voltages. In addition, cell membrane recovery dynamics after electroporation was also studied and the resealing time constants were determined for different pulse treatments. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.