A Method for the Mechanical Stimulation of Living Single-Cells Using a Voltage-Excited AFM Probe

In this paper, we developed a method to drive the oscillation of AFM conductive probe cantilever for stimulating living single cells in liquid with an AC-voltage excitation. We took a copper foil stuck at the bottom of the petri dish as an electrode and the AFM conductive probe was used as both a nano electrode and an actuator to stimulate the living cells when a bias voltage was applied to the electrodes. The voltage and distance between the two electrodes can be adjusted to obtain various required stimulation effects. In the work, the application of electrostatic force and electrolysis for stimulating living cells with bias voltages was analyzed. The experiment results have shown that the method is able to perform controllable stimulation and precise positioning of cells with the AFM. The developed system is an efficient stimulation tool for the study of cellular physiological behaviors.