Che-Hung Chu1,Pei-Ling Chen1,Pochun Chen1
National Taipei University of Technology1
Che-Hung Chu1,Pei-Ling Chen1,Pochun Chen1
National Taipei University of Technology1
For neuroscience research, scalability in regard to the length and dimension of implantable neuro devices was required owing to differences in species and brain regions. For the clinical investigation of neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and epilepsy, specifically designed implantable neuro devices for precise focus localization have emerged. Among them, in Alzheimer's disease (AD) studies, the metabolic hypothesis of AD is among the models that have gained much traction because glucose hypometabolism is one of the early markers of AD that precede clinical dementia. While a strong argument can be made that reduced glucose uptake is merely a consequence of neurodegeneration, the metabolic hypothesis asserts that brain glucose metabolism is nonetheless an integral part of AD progression and the precipitation of cognitive deficits.<br/>In this study, a flexible microelectrode array device is developed with a polyimide substrate, nanoporous platinum microelectrode array, and a biocompatible Parylene C package. This device has low electrochemical impedance with an improved signal-to-noise ratio and high sensitivity of glucose concentration by non-enzymatic electrochemical detection. The nanoporous Pt microelectrode demonstrated excellent electrochemical performance of 88.2 (μAcm<sup>-2</sup>mM<sup>-1</sup> ) and 37.02 (μAcm<sup>-2</sup>mM<sup>-1</sup>) using a chronoamperometry (i-t) test method in PBS and ACSF, respectively.<br/>Additionally, we dedicate to maintaining animal welfare ethics and reducing the consumption of animal experiments by developing an artificial prosthesis with agarose to mimic the brain tissue. We successfully developed a prosthesis with tunable impedance, in which we can simulate different neural diseases by adjusting its conductivity to reduce unnecessary animal experiments. The flexible platinum microelectrode shows its high sensitivity to the variation of glucose concentration in the agarose brain prosthesis.