The ability to monitor and investigate intracellular processes is crucial for biomedical, cancer and aging research, and has direct applications in disease diagnosis, and drug development. The investigation of such processes requires tools capable of accurate and quantitative monitoring of an array of dynamically changing physical and chemical properties in specific cells at subcellular resolution and with minimal disruption to the cell. Despite significant recent advances in the field, implementing multiple functions in a single device while maintaining the required subcellular spatial resolution is a major technological challenge, as the entire probing instrument tip should not exceed submicrometer dimensions. Therefore, existing tools are limited in their sensing capabilities to single properties. The main objective of FUNPROBE is to develop a novel fabrication process for a multifunctional nanoscale probe. To achieve this goal, a new fabrication process was developed, which enables, for the first time, the fabrication of high aspect-ratio sub micromerer tip with embedded open-ended nanochannels. Custom electro-opto-mechanical system and stage was created to enable probe positioning and visualisation on an inverted fluorescence microscope. The integration of conductive layers at the tip to create electrodes for thermal sensing and electrical recording remains to be implemented as part of the fabrication process in the future. The development of future multiplexed devices for cell-sensing at the nanoscale is in alignment with the European Commission's aims of developing multifunctional nanoenabled products for different applications.
