Professor Shimon Weiss leads team to develop nanosensors that can be directly inserted into a cell’s lipid membrane and be used to measure membrane potential.

The devices, which are based on inorganic semiconductor nanoparticles, could potentially record action potentials from multiple neurons as well as electrical signals on the nanoscale – for example, across just one synapse. Their paper, “Membrane insertion of—and membrane potential sensing by—semiconductor voltage nanosensors: Feasibility demonstration” was published in the January, 12, 2018 issue of Science Advances.