Conducting polymer devices for biolectronics
Application des polymères conducteurs en bioélectronique
Résumé
The emergence of organic electronics – a technology that relies on carbon-based semiconductors to deliver devices with unique properties – represents one of the most dramatic developments of the past two decades. A rapidly emerging new direction in the field involves the interface with biology. The “soft” nature of organics offers better mechanical compatibility with tissue than traditional electronic materials, while their natural compatibility with mechanically flexible substrates suits the non-planar form factors often required for implants. More importantly, their ability to conduct ions in addition to electrons and holes opens up a new communication channel with biology. The coupling of electronics with living tissue holds the key to a variety of important life-enhancing technologies. One example is bioelectronic implants that record neural signals and/or electrically stimulate neurons. These devices offer unique opportunities to understand and treat conditions such as hearing and vision loss, epilepsy, brain degenerative diseases, and spinal cord injury.The engineering aspect of the work includes the development of a photolithographic process to integrate the conducting polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene: poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) with parylene C supports to make an active device. The technology is used to fabricate electrocorticography (ECoG) probes, high-speed transistors and wearable biosensors. The experimental work explores the fundamentals of communication at the interface between conducting polymers and the brain. It is shown that conducting polymers outperform conventional metallic electrodes for brain signals recording.Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) represent a step beyond conducting polymer electrodes. They consist of a conducting polymer channel in contact with an electrolyte. When a gate electrode excites an ionic current in the electrolyte, ions enter the polymer film and change its conductivity. Since a small amount of ions can effectively “block” the transistor channel, these devices offer significant amplification in ion-to-electron transduction. Using the developed technology a high-speed and high-density OECTs array is presented. The dense architecture of the array improves the resolution of the recording from neural networks and the transistors temporal response are 100 μs, significantly faster than the action potential. The experimental transistor responses are fit and modeled in order to optimize the gain of the transistor. Using the model, an OECT with two orders of magnitude higher normalized transconductance per channel width is fabricated as compared to Silicon-based field effect transistors. Furthermore, the OECTs are integrated to a highly conformable ECoG probe. This is the first time that a transistor is used to record brain activities in vivo. It shows a far superior signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) compare to electrodes. The high SNR of the OECT recordings enables the observation of activities from the surface of the brain that only a perpetrating probe can record. Finally, the application of OECTs for biosensing is explored. The bulk of the currently available biosensors often require complex liquid handling, and thus suffer from problems associated with leakage and contamination. The use of an organic electrochemical transistor for detection of lactate by integration of a room temperature ionic liquid in a gel-format, as a solid-state electrolyte is demonstrated.
Pas de résumé en français seulement en anglais
Origine : Version validée par le jury (STAR)
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