An analytical formula for determining the electrical impedance between a single adherent cell and sensor substrate

Abstract

An analytical formula for electrical impedance between an adherent living cell and sensor substrate measured using a microelectrode is presented for the first time. Previously-reported formula has been applicable only for the case where many cells are on a large electrode. In contrast, our formula is valid even when a microelectrode smaller than the cell size is underneath the cell, which is often the case for the state-of-the-art single-cell analysis. Numerical simulations for verifying the accuracy of our formula reveals that the discrepancies between the theoretical impedances calculated by our formula and numerical simulation results are negligibly small. Our formula will be useful for describing cell-substrate impedance properties in equivalent circuit model analysis or sensor design optimizations.