Design, characterization and testing of a thin-film microelectrode array and signal conditioning microchip for high spatial resolution surface laplacian measurement.

An improved thin-film microelectrode array and signal conditioning board for measuring cardiac surface potentials.

“…A TFMEA and SCM system for cardiac extracellular potential measurements was previously designed and characterized [6]. This section focuses on the procedures followed to further improve and develop these devices.…”

“…Previous work by our group [6] involved the design, development and characterization of a thin-film microelectrode array (TFMEA) directly interfaced to a custom signal conditioning microchip (SCM). This TFMEA-SCM was developed to acquire voltage potentials at the cellular level to calculate the surface Laplacian in cardiac tissue.…”

“…Dong et al [6] developed and characterized a TFMEA-SCM system to investigate electrocardiograms, specifically surface Laplacian measurements, at the level of individual cardiomyocytes. The electrode array was fabricated using standard photolithographic techniques inside a class 100 cleanroom at the University of Louisville.…”

“…Silver electroplating proved to be one of the most challenging parts of the fabrication process. Typically for MEMS applications, an acceptable plating current density should be in the 2 mA to 20 mA per square cm range [6,14]. The current density value can be used to calculate the plating current needed to plate the 250 electrode pads per wafer:…”