Fabrication and degradation characteristic of sputtered iridium oxide neural microelectrodes for FES application

This paper shows the fabrication process of the reactively sputtered iridium oxide film (SIROF) microelectrodes under different oxygen flows and characters the electrochemical performances of the iridium oxide neural microelectrodes which are suffered from stimulus-evoked degradation. The SIROF microelectrodes prepared under 25 sccm oxygen flow shows the least degradation from continuous electrical stimulation (two million phases). That the charge storage capacity is only decreased by 9.6 % and the 1 kHz impedance is only increased by 4.23 %. Hence, the 25 sccm one can be an ideal microelectrode modification material for electrical stimulation with the least degradation.