A liquid metal-polydopamine composite for cell culture and electro-stimulation

  • Francois Marie Allioux*
  • , Salma Merhebi
  • , Li Liu
  • , Franco Centurion
  • , Roozbeh Abbasi
  • , Chengchen Zhang
  • , Jake Ireland
  • , Joanna M. Biazik
  • , Mohannad Mayyas
  • , Jiong Yang
  • , Maedehsadat Mousavi
  • , Mohammad B. Ghasemian
  • , Jianbo Tang
  • , Wanjie Xie
  • , Md Arifur Rahim
  • , Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh*
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

Gallium (Ga) is a low melting point metal in the liquid state in the biological environment which presents a unique combination of fluidity, softness, and metallic electrical and thermal properties. In this work, liquid Ga is proposed as a biocompatible electrode material for cell culture by electro-stimulation since the cytotoxicity of Ga is generally considered low and some Ga compounds have been reported to exhibit anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory activities. Complementarily, polydopamine (PDA) was coated on liquid Ga to increase the attachment capability of cells on the liquid Ga electrode and provide enhanced biocompatibility. The liquid Ga layer could be readily painted at room temperature on a solid inert substrate, followed by the formation of a nanoscale PDA coating layer resulting in a conformable and biocompatible composite electrode. The PDA layer was shown to coordinate with Ga3+, which is sourced from liquid Ga, providing electrical conductivity in the cell culture medium. The PDA-Ga3+ composite acted as a conductive substrate for advanced electro-stimulation for cell culture methods of representative animal fibroblasts. The cell proliferation was observed to increase by ∼143% as compared to a standard glass coverslip at a low potential of 0.1 V of direct coupling stimulation. This novel PDA-Ga3+ composite has potential applications in cell culture and regenerative medicine.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3941-3950
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Materials Chemistry B
Volume11
Issue number17
DOIs
StatePublished - 4 Apr 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Chemistry
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • General Materials Science

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