| AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| MEMS and NEMS Group | Monday Sessions |
| Session MN+BI+NS-MoM |
| Session: | Feature Session: Large Scale Integration of Nanosensors |
| Presenter: | Jack Judy, University of Florida |
| Authors: | J.W. Judy, University of Florida C. Kuliasha, University of Florida P. Rustogi, University of Florida S. Natt, University of Florida B. Spearman, University of Florida S. Mohini, University of Florida J.B. Graham, University of Florida E.W. Atkinson, University of Florida E.A. Nunamaker, University of Florida K.J. Otto, University of Florida C.E. Schmidt, University of Florida |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
To advance fundamental understanding and develop therapies for neurological disease or injury, microfabricated implantable electrode arrays have been designed and manufactured to stimulate and record neural activity. The materials in these implants, as well as the processes used to integrate them together, must be carefully selected to maximize biocompatibility, device performance, and overall reliability. For upper-limb amputees, nerves are a promising neural-interface target to control sophisticated robotic limbs. Recent advances have shown that nerve stimulation can provide natural sensory feedback. In contrast, it is currently not possible to extract large-scale, high-resolution, and reliable movement-intent signals from nerves. To provide rapid and precise limb control and elicit high-resolution sensory percepts, a nerve interface needs many independent motor and sensory channels. Unfortunately, all existing non-invasive and non-regenerative nerve interfaces grossly under-sample the heterogeneous population of efferent and afferent axons. Although tissue engineering, nerve regeneration, and implantable neural-electronic interfaces are individually well-established fields, the concept of merging these fields to create scalable, and high-performance neural interfaces has not been extensively explored. To overcome the scalability challenge, we present a novel approach. Specifically, we describe a hybrid tissue-engineered electronic nerve interface (TEENI), which consists of multi-electrode polyimide-based “threads” embedded into a biodegradable hydrogel composite scaffold that is sutured to the ends of a transected nerve. Single or multiple thread sets can be incorporated in the hydrogel to enable the TEENI implant to comprehensively engage with the nerve. These polyimide threads will be fully enveloped and held precisely in position during implantation by the hydrogel scaffold, which has properties optimized to reduce foreign-body response. Eventually, the hydrogel will degrade and be replaced with regrown and maturing axons. Since the TEENI approach is scalable to high channel counts over the nerve volume, we believe TEENI nerve interfaces are well positioned to comprehensively capture movement-intent information and impart sensory-feedback information so that upper-limb amputees can get the most out of their prosthetic limbs.