Journal
JOURNAL OF MICROMECHANICS AND MICROENGINEERING
Volume 24, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0960-1317/24/2/025010
Keywords
flexible probe; MEMS neural probe; neuron damage; polyimide; sucrose gel
Categories
Funding
- KIST Institutional Program [2E23880]
- National Research Foundation (NRF)
- Korea Government (MEST) [2012R1A2A2A02118 38]
- National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST), Republic of Korea [2E23880] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
- National Research Foundation of Korea [2012R1A2A2A02011838] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
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This paper presents a flexible microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) neural probe that minimizes neuron damage and immune response, suitable for chronic recording applications. MEMS neural probes with various features such as high electrode densities have been actively investigated for neuron stimulation and recording to study brain functions. However, successful recording of neural signals in chronic application using rigid silicon probes still remains challenging because of cell death and macrophages accumulated around the electrodes over time from continuous brain movement. Thus, in this paper, we propose a new flexible MEMS neural probe that consists of two segments: a polyimide-based, flexible segment for connection and a rigid segment composed of thin silicon for insertion. While the flexible connection segment is designed to reduce the long-term chronic neuron damage, the thin insertion segment is designed to minimize the brain damage during the insertion process. The proposed flexible neural probe was successfully fabricated using the MEMS process on a silicon on insulator wafer. For a successful insertion, a biodegradable sucrose gel is coated on the flexible segment to temporarily increase the probe stiffness to prevent buckling. After the insertion, the sucrose gel dissolves inside the brain exposing the polyimide probe. By performing an insertion test, we confirm that the flexible probe has enough stiffness. In addition, by monitoring immune responses and brain histology, we successfully demonstrate that the proposed flexible neural probe incurs fivefold less neural damage than that incurred by a conventional silicon neural probe. Therefore, the presented flexible neural probe is a promising candidate for recording stable neural signals for long-time chronic applications.
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