Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication Principles: Chip Based Microelectrochemical Cell Array for Whole-Cell Patch-Clamp Recording

Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication Principles

"Chip Based Microelectrochemical Cell Array for Whole-Cell Patch-Clamp Recording,"
by T. Zheng, G. Baaken, J. Rühe, J. C. Behrend and R. Zhu,
in the Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems & Eurosensors XXXIII (TRANSDUCERS & EUROSENSORS XXXIII), 2019, pp. 1005-1008

After careful and considered review of the content and authorship of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE's Publication Principles.

This article was submitted by T. Zheng without the consent of any of the coauthors, especially without that of the principal investigator of the research project, Prof. Jan C. Behrends (not: Behrend). Prof. R. Zhu of Tsinghua University, China, the last author, was not involved in the work, which was entirely performed at the University of Freiburg, Germany. No funding from the Natural Science Foundation of China was involved, instead the work was funded in part by the German Ministry of Research (BMBF, FKZ 031A511B). The Natural Science Foundation of China funded T. Zheng to attend the conference. Additionally, the device described in the article had been published previously as a journal article:

Generation of Chip Based Microelectrochemical Cell Arrays for Long-Term and High-Resolution Recording of Ionic Currents Through Ion Channel Proteins
by T. Zheng, G. Baaken, M. Vellinger, J.C. Behrends, J. Rühe,
in Sens. Actuators, B, 2014, 268–275

The article also fails to cite a prior publication, in patent form, of the trans-electroporaton principle (Behrends, J.C., Baaken, G. and Dondapati S.K. (2011) METHOD AND MICROSTRUCTURE DEVICE FOR THE ELECTRICAL CONTACTING OF BIOLOGICAL CELLS (WO2013083270 (A2)/ DE102011120394 (B4)).


High electrostablity and a long life-time of the devices are crucial for ionic current recording through ion channel proteins embedded in biological cell membrane based on planar chip technology for electrophysiological measurements. In this paper, we propose a novel planar microchip integrated with microelectrochemical cell array to more toward a feasible solution for ion channel screening with high resolution and long life-time. Through this chip based method, stable current recording through biological cell membrane is achieved with good electrical sealing resistance. In addition, with no need for complex fluidic connections, this method allows for an easy operation and further miniaturization of the measuring system.