The nanomorphology of cell surfaces of adhered osteoblasts

• Christian Voelkner,
• Mirco Wendt,
• Regina Lange,
• Max Ulbrich,
• Martina Gruening,
• Susanne Staehlke,
• Barbara Nebe,
• Ingo Barke and
• Sylvia Speller

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2021, 12, 242–256, doi:10.3762/bjnano.12.20

• remain obscure. A localized ion current flowing through a nanopipette probe represents a suitable non-invasive interaction, which is exploited in scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM) [19][20][21]. SICM is well suited to probe soft and responsive surfaces, such as those of living cells. The applied

• pressure is only a few hundred pascals and results from the hydrostatic pressure of the fill level of the nanopipette [22]. The ion current drops during the probe–sample approach, because the effective area for the ion trajectories becomes smaller. This effect is referred to as current squeezing. SICM is

• nanomorphologies of osteoblast-like cells (MG-63) adhered on glass and amine-functionalized surfaces in live and fixed states. Note that by “nanomorphology” we refer to structures laterally not smaller than ca. 50 nm, since the lateral resolution is limited by the opening of the nanopipette. Our studies address

Filling nanopipettes with apertures smaller than 50 nm: dynamic microdistillation

• Evelyne Salançon and
• Bernard Tinland

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2181–2187, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.204

• completely filled using this new technique. The nanopipettes are first filled with pure water, which is later replaced with the desired electrolyte via electromigration. Electrical measurements are used to check that filling is complete. Keywords: current rectification; distillation; filling; nanopipette

• large community of researchers is currently working on characterizing nanopipette geometries, using different methods to address aperture size [8][9][10][11][12][13]. While nanopipettes are known to be simple and easy to fabricate, batch-to-batch reproducibility is poor, particularly for the difficult

• small and large angles, would therefore be highly desirable. It would help to improve the spatial resolution in scanning conductance experiments, in optimizing the signal-to-noise ratio during single-molecule delivery and in straining long-molecule stretching during translocation. Small nanopipette