Polymer-CMOS Hybrid Neural Probes for Large-Scale Neuro-Electronic Interfacing

Abstract

Achieving a stable, long-term connection with millions of neurons within living organisms remains one of the dreams of neuroscience. Silicon shank based probes lead the field in terms of pure channel count. On the other hand, polymer neural probes offer superior biocompatibility, ruggedness and lower cost. This work tries to merge these technologies while exploring new electronic and interconnect design methods, ultimately yielding a prototype of a polymer-CMOS hybrid neural probe with a gold bump interconnect along with an electronic design based on bipolar transistor input devices, pseudo-capacitive AC coupling and in-pixel digitization.

Keywords

• hybrid
• neural interface
• polyimide
• CMOS
• neural probe
• gold bump
• thermosonic bonding
• BJT
• delta-sigma