For the measurement of events of dopamine (DA) release as well as the coordinating neurotransmission in the nerve system, a neural microelectrode array (nMEA) electrodeposited directionally with polypyrrole graphene (PG) nanocomposites was fabricated. The deposited graphene significantly increased the surface area of working electrode, which led to the nMEA (with diameter of 20 μm) with excellent selectivity and sensitivity to DA. Furthermore, PG film modification exhibited low detection limit (4 nM, S/N = 3.21), high sensitivity, and good linearity in the presence of ascorbic acid (e.g., 13933.12 μA mM(-1) cm(-2) in the range of 0.8-10 μM). In particular, the nMEA combined with the patch-clamp system was used to detect quantized DA release from pheochromocytoma cells under 100 mM K(+) stimulation. The nMEA that integrates 60 microelectrodes is novel for detecting a large number of samples simultaneously, which has potential for neural communication research.
Keywords: PC12 cells; dopamine; neural microelectrode array; polypyrrole graphene nanocomposites; quantal secretion; sensitivity.