Critical Overview of the Use of Tethered Bilayer Lipid Membranes with Electrochemical Techniques

Abstract

Studying various substrate interactions with the plasma membrane is difficult due to the large variety of molecules that compose the biological membranes. The importance of understanding plasma membrane interactions, behaviour and properties prompted the development of artificial membranes to recapitulate fundamental aspects of membrane biology. Tethered bilayer lipid membranes (t-BLM) are a versatile type of artificial membrane that enables the simulation of real biological membranes in a controlled, stable environment. Numerous studies have uncovered valuable data using t-BLMs but there are still some unknowns related to t-BLM research that has been overlooked. For example, the effect of unsaturation in phospholipid tails is one of these unknowns. By focusing on gaps in t-BLM research and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy, this manuscript makes evident that further development and classification of t-BLMs is still required to make them a more sound biological mimic.

Fabrication of a Simple and Cheap Screen‐printed Silver/Silver Chloride (Ag/AgCl) Quasi‐reference Electrode

“…The electron transfer occurs between the silver atom of the electrode and the metal ions in the insoluble salt. Because the thermodynamic equilibrium in this reaction, the current that flow through the electrode will not affect the equilibrium, so the potential in the RE maintain constant [14]. Therefore, the Ag/AgCl electrode potential response is controlled by the following equilibrium reaction presented in Figure 4(b).…”

“…The KCl layer is responsible for controlling the chloride ion concentration around the electrode. The conventional RE also have these same parts, the main difference is the layers are incorporated by printing techniques in the printed RE [13, 14].…”

“…The ion‐to‐electron layer is also known as silver/silver chloride layer (Ag/AgCl). In the Ag/AgCl the [Cl − ] is not constant, making the electrode susceptible to fluctuations of its electro‐potential [13, 14].…”