Glass Microfluidic Chips for Long-term Lipid Bilayer Formation

In this paper, we describe a fabrication method of a glass microfluidic chip for long-term and repeatable lipid bilayer formation. We etched a glass substrate by magnetic neutral loop discharge plasma (NLD) (Fig. 1a). Using this method, we fabricated a glass microfluidic chip with microchambers forming lipid bilayer membranes (Fig.1b,c). Since the glass chip prevents absorption of fluids, the formed membrane was maintained more than 4 days. We also found that the formation process is repeatable by washing the channel with organic solvents; these properties show great advantages over the PDMS chips that absorb aqueous solutions and swells by organic solvents. As a demonstration, we successfully formed lipid bilayer membrane that reconstituted nanopore membrane protein (α-hemolysin), and observed a transmembrane phenomenon at the chip.