Design and fabrication of Si-neuroprobe arrays

In this work we proposed designs and demonstrated the fabrication of silicon microprobes for neural prosthesis. Silicon probes of various sizes, cross-sectional shapes and involving different probe encapsulation bio-compatible materials such as Polyimide were fabricated. Especially, isotropically etched (for Si) probes find significant application to reduce tissue trauma during implant. Our approach of using fully CMOS compatible silicon wafer processing with 200mm diameter silicon wafers is to subsequently serve as an enabling platform for manufacture-able process leading to low cost neurodevices. Silicon probes thus fabricated were packaged in order to demonstrate the complete product cycle- “Design-to-Packaging”.