Towards electronic Petri dishes and picolitre-scale single-cell technologies

Microsensors have traditionally been made as one-off, handcrafted probes; Recently, however, there has been a concerted drive to exploit the microfabrication methods developed within the semiconductor industry in order to mass produce cheap, planar microsensing arrays. Such devices might be 'electronic Petri dishes' for the direct stimulation of, and measurement from a variety of single cells, including neurones. In addition, micromachining has been used to construct picolitre-scale analytical sensors to extend the range of single-cell analyses.