Abstract:
Mechanical and electrical stimulations play important roles on the cellular dynamic behavior, thus the mechanical and electrical responses of cells have been widely concerned. In this paper, for the investigation of cellular physiological characteristics, carbon nanocoils (CNCs) are used to exert local mechanical and electrical stimulation on a single living cell, for the first time. It is found that the local force stimulation of CNC causes global responses of cells, and the responses are related to the direction and magnitude of external forces. In addition, the cells show notable polarized responses under the local electrical stimulation from CNC−based electrodes. After removing the local electrical stimulation, the stimulated cells gradually return to the initial state, which indicates that the physiological structure and function of stimulated cells are not damaged. Above results show that CNC−based flexible bioprobes have many advantages of safety, controllability, easy operation and low cost. Thus, CNC−based probe is a powerful tool for the investigations for intracellular mechanical and electrical transduction mechanism and cellular behaviors regulation.