Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) nanoparticles are loaded with curcumin and piperine by in situ emulsion polymerization using dodecyl benzene sulfonic acid both as a stabilizer and a doping agent. The loaded drugs affect the morphology, size, and colloidal stability of the nanoparticles. Furthermore, kinetics studies of nonstimulated drug release have evidenced that polymer···drug interactions are stronger for curcumin than for piperine. This observation suggests that drug delivery systems based on combination of the former drug with PEDOT are much appropriated to show an externally tailored release profile. This is demonstrated by comparing the release profiles obtained in presence and absence of electrical stimulus. Results indicate that controlled and time-programmed release of curcumin is achieved in a physiological medium by applying a negative voltage of -1.25 V to loaded PEDOT nanoparticles.

The combination of electrophysiology and optogenetics enables the exploration of how the brain operates down to a single neuron and its network activity. Neural probes are in vivo invasive devices that integrate sensors and stimulation sites to record and manipulate neuronal activity with high spatiotemporal resolution. State-of-the-art probes are limited by tradeoffs involving their lateral dimension, number of sensors, and ability to access independent stimulation sites. Here, we realize a highly scalable probe that features three-dimensional integration of small-footprint arrays of sensors and nanophotonic circuits to scale the density of sensors per cross-section by one order of magnitude with respect to state-of-the-art devices. For the first time, we overcome the spatial limit of the nanophotonic circuit by coupling only one waveguide to numerous optical ring resonators as passive nanophotonic switches. With this strategy, we achieve accurate on-demand light localization while avoiding spatially demanding bundles of waveguides and demonstrate the feasibility with a proof-of-concept device and its scalability towards high-resolution and low-damage neural optoelectrodes.

Recently, there has been a growing interest in integrated THz photonics for various applications in communications, spectroscopy and sensing. We present a new integrated photonic platform based on active and passive elements integrated in a double-metal, high-confinement waveguide layout planarized with a low-loss polymer. An extended top metallization keeps waveguide losses low while improving dispersion, thermal and RF properties, as it enables to decouple the design of THz and microwave cavities. Free-running on-chip quantum cascade laser combs spanning 800 GHz, harmonic states with over 1.1 THz bandwidth and RF-injected broadband incoherent states spanning over nearly 1.6 THz are observed using a homogeneous quantum-cascade active core. With a strong external RF drive, actively mode-locked pulses as short as 4.4 ps can be produced, as measured by SWIFTS. We demonstrate as well passive waveguides with low insertion loss, enabling the tuning of the laser cavity boundary conditions and the co-integration of active and passive elements on the same THz photonic chip.

To advance neuroscience in vivo experiments, it is necessary to probe a high density of neurons in neural networks with single-cell resolution and be able to simultaneously use different techniques, such as electrophysiological recordings and optogenetic intervention, while minimizing brain tissue damage. We first fabricate electrical neural probes with a high density of electrodes and small tip profile (cross section of shank: 47-μm width × 16-μm thickness). Then, with similar substrate and fabrication techniques, we separately fabricate optical neural probes. We finally indicate a fabrication method that may allow integrating the two functionalities into the same device. High-density electrical probes have been fabricated with 64 pads. Interconnections to deliver the signal are 120-nm wide, and the pads are 5 × 25 μm. Separate optical probes with similar shank dimensions with silicon dioxide and silicon nitride ridge single-mode waveguides have also been fabricated. The waveguide core cross section is 250 nm × 160 nm. Light is focused above the waveguide plane in 2.35-μm diameter spots. The actual probes present two output focusing gratings on the shank.

Transport processes around the magnetic X-point of tokamaks, such as turbulence and mean-field drifts, are scarcely understood. The assessment of the capability of turbulence codes to quantitatively reproduce these dynamics has been hampered by limitations in computational power and available experimental data. In this paper, we present a rigorous validation of full-scale simulations of a newly developed X-point scenario in the basic toroidal plasma device TORPEX, performed with the four state-of-the-art codes FELTOR, GBS, GRILLIX and STORM. Highresolution Langmuir probe array measurements of various time-averaged and fluctuating quantities and across the entire cross-section of TORPEX show that this X-point scenario features the key ingredients of X-point dynamics, such as small-scale fluctuations as well as background drifts.The codes are able to qualitatively reproduce some characteristics of the time-averaged fields, such as the ion saturation current profiles at mid-height, the plasma up-down asymmetry and the blob trajectories. A quantitative agreement is found for the background E × B velocity pattern, while the fluctuation levels are generally underestimated by typically factors of 2 or more, thus background fluxes are found to dominate over turbulent ones in simulations. The sensitivity of the simulation results on the plasma collisionality and on the position of the sources are tested in GBS, showing a mild effect on the overall quantitative agreement with the experiment. Overall, this validation reveals the challenges to reproduce the plasma dynamics near an X-point, and provides a clear path to a quantitative, and computationally relatively inexpensive assessment of future developments in turbulence codes.