A completely transparent MEMS for mechanical properties evaluation of a single living cell

This research involves a new approach for the study of the mechanical properties of single living cells. The main idea is to use micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) to investigate the Young modulus and the morphological modification of cells from the engineering point of view. Many different techniques already exist for a local cell analysis but our goal is to be able to test the properties of a single adherent cell in his complexity. We realized a completely transparent device which is versatile and can be coupled with other analysis tools such as atomic force microscopy (AFM) and patch clamp. Starting from a transparent wafer we developed a system to obtain high transparency suspended structures. All structures are made by using micro fabrication techniques. Our MEMS is composed by 3 main parts: (i) testing, (ii) measurement and (iii) actuation area.