Improved stability of free-standing lipid bilayers based on nanoporous alumina films

Abstract

In this study, we propose a method for improving the stability of free-standing bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs) by preparing BLMs across nanoporous alumina films. The use of porous alumina reduced individual membrane size to improve the BLM stability. The BLMs were stable under an applied voltage of ±1 V. The lifetime of the BLMs was 16–30 h with and without incorporated gramicidin channels. Electric properties of the BLMs as a platform for channel-current recordings are also discussed. Since the total area of the BLMs is still large to facilitate protein incorporation, our approach is useful for designing highly sensitive biosensors based on channel proteins.