Ordered surfactant-templated poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) conducting polymer on microfabricated neural probes

Using a Common Average Reference to Improve Cortical Neuron Recordings From Microelectrode Arrays

“…As noted in other studies, sites coated with PEDOT recorded activity from a slightly larger number of neurons, primarily as a result of reduced thermal noise (Cui and Martin 2003;Ludwig et al 2006;Yang et al 2005). These slight differences in recording performance did not affect the results in this paper (see RESULTS and DISCUSSION for details).…”

Polymerization of the conducting polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) around living neural cells

“…1) Optical microscopy: Nikon Optiphot POL with a Spot RT digital camera; 2) Phase contrast/fluorescence microscopy: Nikon T2000 inverted light/fluorescence microscope with Hg arc lamp, Hamamatsu CCD 16 …”

“…The conductive polymerbased materials that we are developing are electrically stable over time following implantation in tissue, non-biodegradable yet biocompatible [2,5,10,11]. These electrode coatings are relatively soft [12] and can be tailored at the micrometer, nanometer, and molecular scale to have fibrillar, nodular, fuzzy, tubular [13], or porous surface morphologies [14][15][16]. Furthermore, conducting polymers are able to efficiently accommodate charge transport into aqueous media due to mobile charge carriers and interactions with ionic dopants [17].…”

Prospects for Neuroprosthetics: Flexible Microelectrode Arrays with Polymer Conductors

“…Recent studies indicate that, apart from its overall geometry and surface chemistry, the nano and micro surface texture of a substrate may have considerable impact on cell adhesion, differentiation, cell morphology and gene expression as well (Wilkinson, 2004;Barr et al, 2010). Depending on the type of starting material, the deposition parameters (temperature, pH, U, Q, time) and the choice of solvents and auxiliary components (such as surfactants), the form, texture and order of CPs can be fine-tuned (George et al, 2005;Yang et al, 2005;Abidian et al, 2010). And since Wong et al observed that the shape and growth of (endothelial) cells could be noninvasively controlled by just switching the oxidation state of fibronectin-coated PPy (Wong et al, 1994), and that current flow through PPy would promote protein synthesis and neurite outgrowth (Schmidt et al, 1997), later works exploited this combination of conductivity and particular geometries of CPs for the programmable control of e.g., neurite extension, protein adsorption and cell adhesion, or for the spatially defined release of ions, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, neurotransmitters and other signaling factors (Abidian et al, 2010;Ravichandran et al, 2010;Sirivisoot et al, 2011;Svennersten et al, 2011).…”