Designing and fabricating micro-pressure sensors for spiral cuff electrodes

The cuff electrode, an important component of neural prostheses has been developed and improved in many research groups. It is well known that the cuff electrode has the potential hazard of causing nerve injury by compression. The goal of the study is to design a spiral cuff electrode with an embedded micro-pressure sensor by using micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) technologies. The pressure sensors serving as an online well-being monitor, can prevent schemic necrosis of a nerve from excessive pressure. We adopted a capacitive mechanism as the basic configuration because of its high sensitivity and good noise resistance. The sensor was designed and simulated with finite element analyses.