A novel planar microelectrode array fabricated for brain slice electrophysiology

To provide an effective and widely applicable tool for electrophysiological experiments of acute hippocampal slices, a novel planar microelectrode array (pMEA) was fabricated by standard photolithography technology. The novel pMEA has a special distribution of microelectrodes, with the nano-structure interfaces, the low impedance and superior signal-to-noise ratio characteristics. It could be directly applied to the electrophysiological experiments for different regions of acute hippocampal slices from rat brains. The electrophysiological signals from the CA3 and CA1 regions of an acute hippocampal slice were successfully recorded by the novel pMEA in this article.