Micro-coil probes for magnetic intracortical neural stimulation: Trade-offs in materials and design.

Neural probes for intracortical neuromodulation in the brain have advanced with the developments in micro- and nanofabrication technologies. Most of these technologies for the intracortical stimulation have relied on the direct electrical stimulation via electrodes or arrays of electrodes. Generating electric fields using time-varying magnetic fields is a more recent neuromodulation technique that has proven to be more specifically effective for the intracortical stimulation. Additionally, current-actuated coils require no conductive contact with tissues and enable precise tailoring of magnetic fields, which are unaffected by the non-magnetic nature of the biological tissue and encapsulation layers. The material and design parameter space for such micro-coil fabrication can be optimized and tailored to deliver the ideal performance depending on the parameters needed for operation. In this work, we review the key requirements for implantable microcoils including the probe structure and material properties and discuss their characteristics and related challenges for the applications in intracortical neuromodulation.

Sol-gel solution-deposited InGaZnO thin film transistors.

Thin film transistors (TFTs) fabricated by solution processing of sol-gel oxide semiconductor precursors in the group In-Ga-Zn are described. The TFT mobility varies over a wide range depending on the precursor materials, the composition, and the processing variables, with the highest mobility being about 30 cm(2)/(V s) for IZO and 20 cm(2)/(V s) for IGZO. The positive dark bias stress effect decreases markedly as the mobility increases and the high mobility devices are quite stable. The negative bias illumination stress effect is also weaker in the higher mobility TFTs, and some different characteristic properties are observed. The TFT mobility, threshold voltage, and bias stress properties are discussed in terms of the formation of self-compensated donor and acceptor states, based on the chemistry and thermodynamics of the sol-gel process.

Hybrid Si nanowire/amorphous silicon FETs for large-area image sensor arrays.

Silicon nanowire (SiNW) field-effect transistors (FETs) were fabricated from nanowire mats mechanically transferred from a donor growth wafer. Top- and bottom-gate FET structures were fabricated using a doped a-Si:H thin film as the source/drain (s/d) contact. With a graded doping profile for the a-Si:H s/d contacts, the off-current for the hybrid nanowire/thin-film devices was found to decrease by 3 orders of magnitude. Devices with the graded contacts had on/off ratios of ∼10(5), field-effect mobility of ∼50 cm(2)/(V s), and subthreshold swing of 2.5 V/decade. A 2 in. diagonal 160 × 180 pixel image sensor array was fabricated by integrating the SiNW backplane with an a-Si:H p-i-n photodiode.