Ultra-Compliant Degradable Hydrogel-Based Bioelectrode Applied for Treating Peripheral Neural Injury

Beioelectronic medicine is modulating neuronal functions by using a prosthetic implant to provide more efficient treatment on the neural diseases. However, the peripheral nerves have fine structures with curvilinear surfaces, which limits the application of the present implanted neural electrodes to allow for the entire lamination on the moisture-rich nerve bundle tissues. The mechanical mismatch tends to cause the sequent foreign tissue responses, while it also limits the signal transduction between neural interfaces. Therefore, in this project, in order to treat peripheral nerve injury, an ultra-compliant neural implant will be developed. The innovation will include (1) a moisture-free adhesive substrate with tissues-mimic property, anti-fouling ability, anti-inflammation ability, and biodegradability to provide completely fit to tissue surface; (2) a facial bio-inspired fabrication process for device fabrication; (3) integration of a 5-channel neural arrays with robust and stable tissue conformal ability; (4) a neural peripheral interface which can provide sensitive and stable neural recording/stimulating. In the following two years, work will be focused on materials design of the electrode substrate, device feature design, development of a new transfer printing technology, and the invivo neural recording/stimulating. The strategy based on the design of electronic architectures combined with the contribution of high adhesion and mechanical compliancy of bio-inspired substrates is used to stabilize the intrinsic heterogeneous interface of the device, which will be beneficial for reducing stimulation thresholds and improve the fidelity of neural recording