The ability to monitor electrogenic cells accurately plays a pivotal role in neuroscience, cardiology and cell biology. Despite pioneering research and long-lasting efforts, the existing methods for intracellular recording of action potentials on the large network scale suffer limitations that prevent their widespread use. Here, we introduce the concept of a meta-electrode, a planar porous electrode that mimics the optical and biological behaviour of three-dimensional plasmonic antennas but also preserves the ability to work as an electrode. Its synergistic combination with plasmonic optoacoustic poration allows commercial complementary metal–oxide semiconductor multi-electrode arrays to record intracellular action potentials in large cellular networks. We apply this approach to measure signals from human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac cells, rodent primary cardiomyocytes and immortalized cell types and demonstrate the possibility of non-invasively testing a variety of relevant drugs. Due to its robustness and easiness of use, we expect the method will be rapidly adopted by the scientific community and by pharmaceutical companies.

准确地监测电源细胞的能力在神经科学，心脏病学和细胞生物学中起着至关重要的作用。尽管进行了开创性的研究和长期的努力，但是用于在大网络规模上对动作电位进行细胞内记录的现有方法受到限制，从而阻止了其广泛使用。在这里，我们介绍了一种超细电极的概念，这是一种平面多孔电极，它模仿三维等离激元天线的光学和生物行为，但也保留了用作电极的能力。它与等离子体光声穿透的协同结合使商业互补的金属氧化物半导体多电极阵列可以记录大型细胞网络中的细胞内动作电位。我们应用这种方法来测量人源性多能干细胞衍生的心肌细胞，啮齿动物原代心肌细胞和永生化细胞类型的信号，并证明了非侵入性测试多种相关药物的可能性。由于其健壮性和易用性，我们预计该方法将被科学界和制药公司迅速采用。