Neural probe technologies have already had a significant positive effect on our understanding of the brain by revealing the functioning of networks of biological neurons. Probes are implanted in different areas of the brain to record and/or stimulate specific sites in the brain. Neural probes are currently used in many clinical settings for diagnosis of brain diseases such as seizers, epilepsy, migraine, Alzheimer's, and dementia. We find these devices assisting paralyzed patients by allowing them to operate computers or robots using their neural activity. In recent years, probe technologies were assisted by rapid advancements in microfabrication and microelectronic technologies and thus are enabling highly functional and robust neural probes which are opening new and exciting avenues in neural sciences and brain machine interfaces. With a wide variety of probes that have been designed, fabricated, and tested to date, this review aims to provide an overview of the advances and recent progress in the microfabrication techniques of neural probes. In addition, we aim to highlight the challenges faced in developing and implementing ultra-long multi-site recording probes that are needed to monitor neural activity from deeper regions in the brain. Finally, we review techniques that can improve the biocompatibility of the neural probes to minimize the immune response and encourage neural growth around the electrodes for long term implantation studies.

We present in this paper a new topology of inductively-coupled links based on a monolithic multi-coils receiver. A model is built to characterize the proposed structure using Matlab and is verified employing simulation tools under ADS electromagnetic environment. This topology accounts for the losses associated with the receiver micro-coil including substrate and oxide layers. The geometry of micro-coils significantly desensitizes the link to both angular and side misalignments. A custom fabrication process using 1 micron metal thickness is also presented by which two sets of micro-coils varying in the number of coils are realized. The first set possesses one coil 4 mm of diameter and represents a power efficiency close to 4% while the second set possesses multi-coils with an efficiency of 18%. The resulting optimized link can deliver up to 50 mW of power to power up an implantable device either sensor or stimulator. The experimental results for the prototypes are remarkably in agreement with those obtained from simulated models and circuits.

We describe a compact luminescent gaseous oxygen (O2) sensor microsystem based on the direct integration of sensor elements with a polymeric optical filter and placed on a low power complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) imager integrated circuit (IC). The sensor operates on the measurement of excited-state emission intensity of O2-sensitive luminophore molecules tris(4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline) ruthenium(II) ([Ru(dpp)3]2+) encapsulated within sol–gel derived xerogel thin films. The polymeric optical filter is made with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) that is mixed with a dye (Sudan-II). The PDMS membrane surface is molded to incorporate arrays of trapezoidal microstructures that serve to focus the optical sensor signals on to the imager pixels. The molded PDMS membrane is then attached with the PDMS color filter. The xerogel sensor arrays are contact printed on top of the PDMS trapezoidal lens-like microstructures. The CMOS imager uses a 32 × 32 (1024 elements) array of active pixel sensors and each pixel includes a high-gain phototransistor to convert the detected optical signals into electrical currents. Correlated double sampling circuit, pixel address, digital control and signal integration circuits are also implemented on-chip. The CMOS imager data is read out as a serial coded signal. The CMOS imager consumes a static power of 320 µW and an average dynamic power of 625 µW when operating at 100 Hz sampling frequency and 1.8 V DC. This CMOS sensor system provides a useful platform for the development of miniaturized optical chemical gas sensors.

The authors describe a simple dry-etch silicon microfabrication process to develop an array of electrodes with multiple recording sites suitable for neural recording applications. This new high-yield fabrication process uses commercially available ultra-thin silicon wafers as substrate material. A xenon difluoride system is used to etch the silicon substrate to form the electrode structures. The novel concept of structural reinforcement to produce elongated and reliable probe electrodes is introduced. The authors demonstrate recording silicon electrodes that can reach lengths longer than 10 mm having only 50 mm thicknesses and an 100 mm average width. This new microfabrication process illustrates a simple, cost-effective and mass-producible method for developing ultralong silicon probes for deep brain implantation and neural recording.

We describe an automated robotic technique called direct-dispense to fabricate a polymeric platform that supports optical sensor arrays. Direct-dispense, which is a type of the emerging direct-write microfabrication techniques, uses fugitive organic inks in combination with cross-linkable polymers to create microfluidic channels and other microstructures. Specifically, we describe an application of direct-dispensing to develop optical biochemical sensors by fabricating planar ridge waveguides that support sol-gel-derived xerogel-based thin films. The xerogel-based sensor materials act as host media to house luminophore biochemical recognition elements. As a prototype implementation, we demonstrate gaseous oxygen (O2) responsive optical sensors that operate on the basis of monitoring luminescence intensity signals. The optical sensor employs a Light Emitting Diode (LED) excitation source and a standard silicon photodiode as the detector. The sensor operates over the full scale (0%-100%) of O2 concentrations with a response time of less than 1 second. This work has implications for the development of miniaturized multi-sensor platforms that can be cost-effectively and reliably mass-produced.