Team 11

Team Members

Faculty Advisor

Areez Rahim
Ryan Flynn
Sarah Roberts

Profs. Sina Shahbazmohamadi & Patrick Kumavor

Sponsor

Pulse Technologies - Integer

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Hierarchical Laser Restructuring for Next Generation Neural Interfacing Electrodes

Long-term implantable neural interfacing devices are able to diagnose, monitor, and treat many cardiac, neurological, retinal and hearing disorders through nerve stimulation, as well as sensing and recording electrical signals to and from neural tissue. To improve specificity, functionality, and performance of these devices, the electrodes and microelectrode arrays—that are the basis of most emerging devices—must be further miniaturized and must possess exceptional electrochemical performance and charge exchange characteristics with neural tissue. Earlier work done has shown that the electrochemical performance of femtosecond-laser hierarchically-restructured electrodes can be tuned to yield unprecedented performance values that significantly exceed those reported in the literature, e.g. charge storage capacity and specific capacitance were shown to have improved by two orders of magnitude and over 700-fold, respectively, compared to un-restructured electrodes. However, laser systems must be designed and built to allow for implementation of such systems for various different geometries, electrodes sizes and thicknesses. This senior design project addresses this challenge by designing and building a laser system capable of doing the hierarchical laser restructuring.