Highly durable crack sensor integrated with silicone rubber cantilever for measuring cardiac contractility

To date, numerous biosensing platforms have been developed for assessing drug-induced cardiac toxicity by measuring the change in contractile force of cardiomyocytes. However, these low sensitivity, low-throughput, and time-consuming processes are severely limited in their real-time applications. Here, we propose a cantilever device integrated with a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-encapsulated crack sensor to measure cardiac contractility. The crack sensor is chemically bonded to a PDMS thin layer that allows it to be operated very stably in culture media. The reliability of the proposed crack sensor has been improved dramatically compared to no encapsulation layer. The highly sensitive crack sensor continuously measures the cardiac contractility without changing its gauge factor for up to 26 days (>5 million heartbeats), while changes in contractile force induced by drugs are monitored using the crack sensor-integrated cantilever. Finally, experimental results are compared with those obtained via conventional optical methods to verify the feasibility of building a contraction-based drug-toxicity testing system.