A Chip Integrity Monitor for Evaluating Moisture/Ion Ingress in mm-Sized Single-Chip Implants

For mm-sized implants incorporating silicon integrated circuits, ensuring lifetime operation of the chip within the corrosive environment of the body still remains a critical challenge. For the chip's packaging, various polymeric and thin ceramic coatings have been reported, demonstrating high biocompatibility and barrier properties. Yet, for...

Long-term encapsulation of platinum metallization using a HfO2 ALD - PDMS bilayer for non-hermetic active implants

In this work, we investigate the insulating performance of an atomic layer deposited (ALD) HfO2 - polymer bilayer for platinum (Pt) metallization. As test vehicles, Pt interdigitated comb structures (IDC) were designed and fabricated on SiO2/Si substrates. The IDCs were first coated with a 100 nm thin HfO2 ALD layer. A group of samples was...

A Chip Integrity Monitor for Evaluating Long-term Encapsulation Performance Within Active Flexible Implants

One key obstacle in employing silicon integrated circuits in flexible implants is ensuring a long-term operation of the chip within the wet corrosive environment of the body. For this reason, throughout the years, various biocompatible insulating materials have been proposed, yet, evaluating their long-term encapsulation performance on...