Deconvoluting topography and spatial physiological activity of live macrophage cells by scanning electrochemical microscopy in constant-distance mode.

Detection of reactive oxygen species (ROS) released from live macrophage cells (RAW264.7) without any addition of external redox mediators using constant-height and constant-distance mode scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) was presented in this Letter. The successful separation of the ROS profile from the topography of cells in the physiological condition was demonstrated by recording the amperometric current and probing position in the z-direction along with lateral coordinates at each pixel where an alternating current (AC) was kept constant. It was discovered that the nucleus region of the cell releases more ROS than other organelle regions and the height of the cell is approximately 4.8 μm. To our best knowledge, this work reports the first spatially monitored ROS release without the influence of cell morphology using SECM.