Development of an integrated CMOS-microfluidic instrumentation array for high throughput membrane protein studies

Because membrane proteins are critically important in biological processes and among the most prevalent drug targets, a thorough understanding of their structure and function is highly desired. However, this has been difficult to achieve due to the laborious nature of existing tools and techniques for membrane protein studies. This paper presents a new microsystem concept for high throughput membrane protein characterization utilizing an array of synthetic planar lipid bilayers within multi-channel microfluidics on the surface of CMOS electrochemical instrumentation circuits. A new technique for CMOS polymer packaging that enables planar routing of bonding pad signals and formation of multi-channel microfluidics on the surface of on-chip electrochemical sensor electrodes is demonstrated. The developed techniques enable ~1000 planar lipid bilayer membrane protein interfaces to be implemented directly on the surface of high performance CMOS instrumentation and the integration methods can be used in lab-on-chip applications.