Assessment of GaN chips for culturing cerebellar granule neurons

Enhanced cell growth on nanotextured GaN surface treated by UV illumination and fibronectin adsorption

“…Some researchers found that GaN was a promising candidate for fabrication of neuron chips [12][13][14]. For this application, increasing the interaction between neural cells and GaN surface is very important.…”

“…Young et al [12,13] reported that neurons cultured on GaN surface formed more extensive neuritic networks than those on other semiconductor surfaces. Ivanisevic' group [14] studied the PC12 cell behavior on GaN surface and found that GaN was a biocompatible, non-toxic material and could be used to probe chemical and electrical stimuli associated with neural interfaces.…”

“…However, most of the reports about GaN-based bioapplications were limited to the planar film configuration [12][13][14][15][16]. Since GaN nanowires (NWs) having higher surface areas and conductivity compared to the thin film counterparts [17,18], it could be expected that GaN NWs are promising building blocks for biosensors with better performance.…”

“…Gallium nitride (GaN) is a well-known wide band gap III-V semiconductor [7][8][9]. Besides its excellent optical and electrical properties, the good chemical stability, biocompatibility and the feasibility of covalent functionalization with target molecules make GaN a promising candidate for use in biomedical devices such as implantable neural probes and cell culture substrates [10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

Optical properties of functionalized GaN nanowires

“…4 Furthermore, GaN exhibits good chemical stability as well as bio-compatibility, fulfilling the substantial requirements for bio-applications. 5,6 Meanwhile, NWs possess a large surface-to-volume ratio while maintaining the direct conduction pathway, which is quite unique and can be advantageous as building blocks for next generation devices. As reported earlier, the surface dominates and significantly impacts the photoconductivity, 7,8 mechanical, 9 and electromechanical 10 properties of GaN NWs at a scale far beyond the quantum confinement regime.…”