Effect of Signals on the Encapsulation Performance of Parylene Coated Platinum Tracks for Active Medical Implants

Platinum is widely used as the electrode material for implantable devices. Owing to its high biostability and corrosion resistivity, platinum could also be used as the main metallization for tracks in active implants. Towards this goal, in this work we investigate the stability of parylene-coated Pt tracks using passive and active tests. The...

Towards an Active Graphene-PDMS Implant

Neural interface in the form of microelectrodes are used to monitor and treat spinal cord injury and other neurological disorders by the means of recording and stimulation. Despite of the apparent result of these electrical interventions, understanding of the mechanism behind neural stimulation is still inadequate. The use of optical monitoring...

Towards a semi-flexible parylene-based platform technology for active implantable medical devices

Active implantable medical devices have been developed for diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of large variety of neural disorders. Since the mechanical properties of these devices need to be matched to the tissue, soft materials, such as polymers are often preferred as a substrate [1]. Parylene is a good candidate, as it is highly...

The influence of soft encapsulation materials on the wireless power transfer links efficiency

As the era of Bioelectronic medicines (BEms) evolves, new technological challenges are generated, including miniaturized devices that are encapsulated with flexible materials and energized by wireless power transmission (WPT) techniques. Among them, magnetostatic, also known as inductive, and ultrasound (US) are the most viable candidates for...

Design of a Multi-Functional Smart Optrode for Electrophysiology and Optogenetics

Optogenetics is a neuromodulation method that holds great potential for the realization of advanced neuroprostheses due to its precise spatial-temporal control of neuronal activity [1]. The development of novel optogenetic implants (optrodes) may open new doors to investigate complex brain circuitry and chronical brain disorders, such as...

Design and Custom Fabrication of a Smart Temperature Sensor for an Organ-on-a-chip Platform

Incubators in cell cultures are used to grow and maintain cells under optimal temperature alongside other key variables, such as pH, humidity, atmospheric conditions etc. As enzymatic activity and protein synthesis proceed optimally at 37.5 oC, a temperature rise can cause protein denaturation, whereas a drop in temperature can slow down...

Polymer-Encapsulated Single-Chip Implants for Bioelectronic Medicine

The main goal of bioelectronic medicine is to, one day, replace conventional chemical drugs with miniaturized implants. This way, tiny electrical pulses will be locally delivered to a small group of neurons in order to influence and modify biological functions. Developing such implants, however, has brought many new challenges both in the...

Embedding Small Electronic Components into Tiny Flexible Implants

Electronic components in the form of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) establishing the communication between the body and the implant, such as stimulation and recording, have, nowadays, become essential elements for current and future generations of implantable devices, as medicine is looking into substituting its traditional...

Monolithic Integration of an In-situ Smart Sensor in a Silicon-based Organ-on-a-chip Platform for Monitoring the Temperature of Stem Cell Culture

This research reports on the design and co-fabrication of a time-mode signal-processing in situ temperature sensor customized for the Cytostrech, an organ-on-a-chip (OOC) device. The circuit was fabricated using an in-house integrated circuit technology (BiCMOS7) that requires only seven lithographic steps to fabricate npn and MOS devices, and...

Towards a flexible brain implant with 10.000 independent channels

Electronic implants are becoming a valuable tool to explore as well as regulate neural activity, potentially overcoming neural disabilities that are not yet curable. For effective exploration and regulation, it has become increasingly necessary to cover larger areas of neural tissue and to interact at a higher resolution by means of electrode...

Embedding small and thin electronics into flexible implants

Electronic components in the form of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) establishing the communication between the body and the implant, such as stimulation and recording, have, nowadays, become essential elements for current and future generations of implantable devices, as medicine is looking into substituting its traditional...

An Ultra High-Frequency 8-Channel Neurostimulator Circuit with 68% Peak Power Efficiency

In order to recruit neurons in excitable tissue, constant current neural stimulators are commonly used. Recently, ultra high-frequency (UHF) stimulation has been proposed and proven to have the same efficacy as constant-current stimulation. UHF stimulation uses a fundamentally different way of activating the tissue: each stimulation phase is...

Comments on "Compact, Energy-Efficient High-Frequency Switched Capacitor Neural Stimulator With Active Charge Balancing" (vol 11, pg 878, 2017): Comments on 'Compact, energy-efficient high-frequency switched capacitor neural stimulator with active charge balancing (IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (2017) 11:4 (878–888) DOI: 10.1109/TBCAS.2017.2694144)

This manuscript points out some mistakes in the Introduction and in the table of comparison of a paper already published in this journal by Hsu and Schmid [1]. Although the main claim of [1] is still preserved, we believe the paper needs to be rectified for scientific correctness of the work. In [1], the first High Frequency Switched...

Realizing flexible bioelectronic medicines for accessing the peripheral nerves: Technology considerations

Patients suffering from conditions such as paralysis, diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis could in the future be treated in a personalised manner using bioelectronic medicines (BEms) (Nat Rev Drug Discov 13:399–400, 2013, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 113:8284–9, 2016, J Intern Med 282:37–45, 2017). To deliver this personalised therapy based on...

An Ultrasonically Powered and Controlled Ultra-High-Frequency Biphasic Electrical Neurostimulator

This paper presents the design of a neurostimulator performing biphasic ultra-high-frequency electrical stimulation while being driven from ultrasound energy. Unlike conventional constant current or constant voltage stimulators or state-of-the-art ultra-high-frequency stimulators, the system does not convert the input AC signal into regulated...

Design and Custom Fabrication of a Smart Temperature Sensor for an Organ-on-a-chip Platform

This paper reports on the design and fabrication of a time-mode signal-processing in situ temperature sensor customized for an organ-on-a-chip (OOC) application. The circuit was fabricated using an in-house integrated circuit (IC) technology that requires only seven lithographic steps and is compatible with MEMS fabrication process. The...

An Energy-Efficient, Inexpensive, Spinal Cord Stimulator with Adaptive Voltage Compliance for Freely Moving Rats

This paper presents the design and fabrication of an implantable control unit intended for epidural spinal cord stimulation (ESCS) in rats. The device offers full programmability over stimulation parameters and delivers a constant current to an electrode array to be located within the spinal canal. It implements an adaptive voltage compliance...

MEMS-Electronics Integration: A Smart Temperature Sensor for an Organ-on-a-chip Platform