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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Jul 10.
Published in final edited form as: J Tissue Eng Regen Med. 2011 Jan 10;5(6):e115–e125. doi: 10.1002/term.377

Figure 2. Electrode Material Optimization.

Figure 2

(A) Sample bioreactor current-versus-time trace, illustrating the concepts of injected charge (the total amount of charge transduced into the bioreactor during a stimulus pulse) and recovered charge (the amount of charge that was injected into the system via reversible processes). (B) Current traces for a 5 V/cm, 2 ms monophasic square wave pulse delivered to bioreactors with electrodes 4 cm in length placed 1 cm apart but differing electrode materials (carbon, stainless steel, titanium-nitride coated titanium, and titanium). (C, D) Contractile activity of tissue-engineered cardiac constructs cultured either under conditions of no stimulation (control) or with pulsatile electric-field stimulation (square-wave monophasic pulses, amplitude 5V/cm, duration 2 ms) for 5 days with electrodes of varying materials (C) Excitation threshold (electrical field voltage gradient that needs to be applied to induce synchronous contractions of cultured tissue constructs) (D) maximum capture rate (the maximum frequency at which tissue constructs can be induced to beat). * significantly different with one-way ANOVA test (p<0.05) n=3 stimulated, from one experiment; n=9 control, from two experiments.