Planar artificial lipid bilayers have been used as a reliable and chemically well-defined model system for decades to study channel-forming pores and ion channels via voltage clamp electrophysiology.

Unlike the classical approach, the Orbit devices rely on the Micro-Electrode Cavity Array (MECA) technology to enhance the ease of use and the throughput of BLM recordings due to parallelization. Each MECA chip consumable contains an array of micro-cavities with diameters in the µm-range which can conveniently be spanned by lipid bilayers as described in great detail in the book chapter provided on this page. Each cavity contains an Ag/AgCl-microelectrode to minimize stray capacitances and to enable parallel recordings with high resolution and low noise.