A novel butterfly wing-inspired heart-on-a-chip platform with a high-bandwidth strain sensor enables high-fidelity detection of fine-scale mechanical dynamics in cardiomyocytes, offering a new tool for cardiovascular research and drug screening.
Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of mortality worldwide, driving the need for novel platforms that capture both the electrical and mechanical facets of cardiac function. While high-resolution electrophysiological techniques, such as patch clamp and microelectrode arrays, provide detailed insights into the electrical activity of cardiomyocytes, methods to accurately resolve their mechanical contractility are still limited. Conventional heart-on-a-chip devices typically employ sensors with low bandwidth and high damping, which distort the fine-scale mechanical signals critical to understanding excitation-contraction coupling. Here, we present a novel, butterfly wing-inspired heart-on-a-chip platform that incorporates a carbon nanotube (CNT)/polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA)-based strain sensor fabricated via direct ink writing, achieving a bandwidth of 22.85 Hz. This enhanced capability enables high-fidelity, multi-frequency detection of cardiomyocyte contractile waveforms, revealing previously undetectable features such as secondary peaks and rapid strain transitions. Our approach provides a complementary tool to existing electrophysiological methods, paving the way for improved mechanistic insights and more precise drug screening in cardiovascular research.
Chen et al. (Sat,) studied this question.