Dispensing and bio-functionalization of giant unilamellar vesicles on a chip

Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) [1], typically >10 mu m in diameter, can serve as interesting models for mimicking biological membranes and furthermore can be usefully leveraged in drug delivery and bio-sensor applications. In this paper, we have demonstrated a chip based vesicle dispensing scheme that utilizes liquid dielectrophoresis (L-DEP) to dispense, precisely positioned GUVs over a range of diameter 30 - 100 mu m, a capability that is not readily achieved by either conventional or microchannel technology. These GUVs can also be individually addressed and tailored for a variety of applications such as bio-sensing and cell-on-a-chip.