Conducting Polymer Devices for Bioelectronics

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. iii 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 transistor's 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 …