State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
Bioelectrochemistry. 2021 Aug;140:107790. doi: 10.1016/j.bioelechem.2021.107790. Epub 2021 Feb 26.
The effects and mechanisms of ultrashort and intense pulsed electric fields on biological cells remain some unknown. Especially for picosecond pulsed electric fields (psPEF) with a high pulse repetition rate, electroporation or nanoporation effects could be induced on cell membranes and intracellular organelle membranes. In this work, the design, implementation, and experimental validation of a wideband psPEF exposure system (WPES) is reported, comprising picosecond pulser and wideband biochip, for the in vitro exposure of suspended cells to high-intensity psPEF. Excited by repetitive picosecond pulses (the duration of 200 ps and the amplitude of a few kilovolts), the proposed biochip adopts grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW) for a wide working bandwidth, which was fabricated with 160 μm thick electrodes for uniform distribution of psPEF in the cross-section. To ensure that only psPEF is generated in the biological medium containing cells except for ionic current, this work proposes to install capillary tubes in the electrode gaps for electrical insulation and cells delivery. By electrical measurements in the time domain and frequency domain, the exposure system is adapted for local generation of extremely high-intensity psPEF with the 3 dB bandwidth up to 4.2 GHz. Furthermore, biological experiments conducted on the developed exposure system verified its capability to permeabilize biological cells under the exposure of high-intensity psPEF.
超短强脉冲电场对生物细胞的影响和作用机制仍存在一些未知。特别是对于具有高脉冲重复率的皮秒脉冲电场（psPEF），可能会在细胞膜和细胞内细胞器膜上诱导电穿孔或纳米穿孔效应。在这项工作中，报告了一种宽带皮秒脉冲电场（WPES）暴露系统（包括皮秒脉冲器和宽带生物芯片）的设计、实现和实验验证，用于将悬浮细胞体外暴露于高强度皮秒脉冲电场中。该生物芯片采用接地共面波导（GCPW）作为宽工作带宽，由 160 μm 厚的电极制成，用于在横截面中均匀分布皮秒脉冲电场。为了确保只有皮秒脉冲电场而不是离子电流在含有细胞的生物介质中产生，这项工作提出在电极间隙中安装毛细管以实现电绝缘和细胞输送。通过时域和频域的电测量，该暴露系统适用于在局部产生极高强度的皮秒脉冲电场，其 3 dB 带宽高达 4.2 GHz。此外，在开发的暴露系统上进行的生物实验验证了其在高强度皮秒脉冲电场暴露下使生物细胞穿孔的能力。
