Development of piezoelectric nanostructures for cell stimulation

This paper describes the first insights on the use of piezoelectric two-dimensional nanostructures or nanoflakes (NFs) to electrically stimulate living cells. In the past years, piezoelectric nanostructures have been widely used to fabricate power generators or energy harvesting devices. However, the number of biological applications of this kind of materials is more reduced. We have demonstrated that mechanical interaction produced between the cell and the nanostructures generates a local piezopotential that can induce changes in the intracellular calcium concentration. This observation makes possible the use of nanodevices based on piezoelectric materials for in-situ stimulation of electrically responsive cells like neurons or muscle cells.