Novel flexible implantable electrodes based on conductive polymers and Titanium dioxide

Neural sensing and muscle stimulation have been the subject of several studies for decades. The clinical studies in the literature employ surgically implanted electrodes to record peripheral neural signals, stimulate the muscle tissues or bridge the proximal end of the injured peripheral nerve with...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2018 IEEE 4th Middle East Conference on Biomedical Engineering (MECBME) pp. 30 - 33
Main Authors Al-Othman, Amani, Alatoom, Aseel, Farooq, Afifa, Al-Sayah, Mohammad, Al-Nashash, Hasan
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.03.2018
Subjects
Biomedical engineering
conductive polymers
Electrodes
flexible electrodes
Graphene
Immune system
Impedance
Plastics
TiO 2 -silicone implantable electrodes
Titanium
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Summary:Neural sensing and muscle stimulation have been the subject of several studies for decades. The clinical studies in the literature employ surgically implanted electrodes to record peripheral neural signals, stimulate the muscle tissues or bridge the proximal end of the injured peripheral nerve with the respective muscle. This is achieved by applying an electrical current with certain wave shapes. Conventional implantable electrodes are based on metals micro-wires (microelectrode arrays) mostly made of Platinum. To-date, these implanted microelectrodes suffered from several drawbacks including; 1) damage to the soft tissue, and 2) degradation over time leading to poor electrochemical properties and high interfacial impedance. A more practical electrode should be flexible, possess low interfacial impedance, selective for specific neural locations, and durable to avoid any tissue inflammation. This work aims at developing novel, low cost, flexible and bio-compatible implantable electrodes based on silicone and titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ). The fabricated electrodes were evaluated for their impedance and electrical conductivity using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS). The preliminary experimental results showed an impedance of 24 kO at 1 kHz frequency. These results are promising and comparable to the ones in the literature such as the chromium-silver-chromium (Cr-Ag-Cr) electrodes [1] and Au electrodes [2].
ISSN:2165-4255
DOI:10.1109/MECBME.2018.8402401