Design of tethered bilayer lipid membranes, using wet chemistry via aryldiazonium sulfonic acid spontaneous grafting on silicon and chrome

[Display omitted] •Bilayer lipid membranes are tethered to wafers via simple surfactants wet chemistry.•Solid supported single biomembrane sensors obtained from wet chemistry on Si and Cr.•Grafted commercial surfactants are anchor-harpoon molecules for biomembranes on solid.•Aryldiazonium salt wet chemistry on solids to form Brij and PEG coatings for bilayers.•XPS and neutrons probe the structure of a hydrogel cushion that supports biomembranes. We describe a bottom-up surface functionalization to design hybrid molecular coatings that tether biomembranes using wet chemistry. First, a monolayer was formed by immersion in a NH2-Ar-SO3H solution, allowing aryldiazonium salt radicals to spontaneously bind to it via strong C bonding. After formation of the air-stable and dense molecular monolayer (–Ar-SO3H), a subsequent activation was used to form highly reactive –Ar-SO2Cl groups nearly perpendicular to the monolayer. These can bind commercial surfactants, PEGylated oligomers and other inexpensive molecules via their -OH, -COOH, or -NH2 chain end-moieties, to build hybrid coatings. Metal and oxidized chromium, semi-conductor n-doped silicon (111), are the substrates tested for this protocol and the aromatic organic monolayers formed at their surface are characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). XPS reveals unambiguously the presence of C–Cr and C–Si bonds, ensuring robustness of the coatings. Functional sulfur groups (–SO3H) cover up to 6.5×10−10 mol cm−2 of the silicon interface and 4.7×10−10 mol cm−2 of the oxidized chromium interface. These surface concentrations are comparable to the classic values obtained when the prefunctionalisation is driven by electrochemistry on conductors. Tethered lipid membranes formed on these coatings were analyzed by neutron reflectivity at the interface of functionalized n-doped silicon substrates after immersion in a solution of lipid vesicles and subsequent fusion. Results indicate a rather compact hybrid coating of Brij anchor-harpoon molecules that maintain a single lipid bilayer above the substrate, on top of a hydrated PEO cushion.