@article {Chen2020.10.10.334755, author = {Zhiyuan Chen and Nicolas Boyajian and Zexu Lin and Rose T. Yin and Sofian N. Obaid and Jinbi Tian and Jaclyn A. Brennan and Sheena W. Chen and Alana N. Miniovich and Leqi Lin and Yarong Qi and Xitong Liu and Igor R. Efimov and Luyao Lu}, title = {Flexible and transparent silver nanowire structures for multifunctional electrical and optical biointerfacing}, elocation-id = {2020.10.10.334755}, year = {2020}, doi = {10.1101/2020.10.10.334755}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, abstract = {Transparent microelectrodes have recently emerged as a promising approach to combine electrophysiology with optophysiology for multifunctional biointerfacing. High-performance flexible platforms that allow seamless integration with soft tissue systems for such applications are urgently needed. Here, silver nanowires (Ag NWs)-based transparent microelectrodes and interconnects are designed to meet this demand. The Ag NWs percolating networks are patterned on flexible polymer substrates using an innovative photolithography-based solution-processing technique. The resulting nanowire networks exhibit a high average optical transparency of 76.1-90.0\% over the visible spectrum, low normalized electrochemical impedance of 3.4-15 Ω cm2 at 1 kHz which is even better than those of opaque solid Ag films, superior sheet resistance of 11-25 Ω sq-1, excellent mechanical stability up to 10,000 bending cycles, good biocompatibility and chemical stability. Studies on Langendorff-perfused mouse and rat hearts demonstrate that the Ag NWs microelectrodes enable high-fidelity real-time monitoring of heart rhythm during co-localized optogenetic pacing and optical mapping with negligible light-induced electrical artifacts. This proof-of-concept work illustrates that the solution-processed, transparent, and flexible Ag NWs networks are a promising candidate for the next-generation of large-area multifunctional biointerfaces for interrogating complex biological systems in basic and translational research.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/10/11/2020.10.10.334755}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/10/11/2020.10.10.334755.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }