Tailoring the Surface Chemistry of PEDOT:PSS to Promote Supported Lipid Bilayer Formation

This communication reports on a versatile and substrate-agnostic method to tune the surface chemistry of conducting polymers with the aim of bridging the chemical mismatch between bioelectronic devices and biological systems. As a proof of concept, the surface of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) is grafted with a short-chain oligoethylene glycol monolayer to favor the formation of cell-derived supported lipid bilayers (SLBs). This method is tuned to optimize the affinity between the supported lipid bilayer and the conducting polymer, leading to significant improvements in bilayer quality and therefore electronic readouts. To validate the impact of surface functionalization on the system's ability to transduce biological phenomena into quantifiable electronic signals, the activity of a virus commonly used as a surrogate for SARS-CoV-2 (mouse hepatitis virus) is monitored with and without surface treatment. The functionalized devices exhibit significant improvements in electronic output, stemming from the improved SLB quality, therefore strengthening the case for the use of such an approach in membrane-on-a-chip systems.