Membrane on a chip: a functional tethered lipid bilayer membrane on silicon oxide surfaces.

Vladimir Atanasov, Nikolaus Knorr, Randolph S Duran, Sven Ingebrandt, Andreas Offenhäusser, Wolfgang Knoll, Ingo Köper

Index: Biophys. J. 89(3) , 1780-8, (2005)

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Abstract

Tethered membranes have been proven during recent years to be a powerful and flexible biomimetic platform. We reported in a previous article on the design of a new architecture based on the self-assembly of a thiolipid on ultrasmooth gold substrates, which shows extremely good electrical sealing properties as well as functionality of a bilayer membrane. Here, we describe the synthesis of lipids for a more modular design and the adaptation of the linker part to silane chemistry. We were able to form a functional tethered bilayer lipid membrane with good electrical sealing properties covering a silicon oxide surface. We demonstrate the functional incorporation of the ion carrier valinomycin and of the ion channel gramicidin.