Cellular interfacing with arrays of vertically aligned carbon nanofibers and nanofiber-templated materials

With the advent of micromachining and the more recent focus on nanostructured materials, technology continues to augment the researcher’s ability to probe ever smaller regions of biological matrices. The merging of recent advances in the synthesis of nanostructured materials with the mature technology of microfabrication is beginning to provide complex devices capable of interfacing with biological systems at the molecular scale. This advance is driven largely by the ability to incorporate nanoscale (and ultimately molecular-scale) functionality into practical, multiscale physical devices. In this overview, we focus on one embodiment of nanoscale science, the vertically aligned carbon nanofiber, or VACNF, and investigate how this recently discovered embodiment of an old material is providing new approaches to cellular probing, electrophysiology, and gene delivery applications.