EGNITE: Engineered Graphene for Neural Interface

Abstract

Neural implants technology in medicine aims to restore nervous system functionality in cases of severe degeneration or damage by recording or stimulating the electrical activity of the nervous tissue. Currently available neural implants offer a modest clinical efficacy partly due to the limitations posed by the metals used at the electrical interface with the tissue. Such materials compromise interfacing resolution, and therefore functional restoration, with performance and stability. _x000D_ In this work, I present flexible neural implants based on a biocompatible nanostructured porous graphene thin film that provides a stable and high performance bidirectional neural interface. Compared to standard platinum microelectrode devices, the graphene-based electrodes of 25 μm diameter offer significantly lower impedance and can safely inject 200 times more charge for more than 100 million pulses. I assessed their performance in vivo by recording high fidelity and high resolution epicortical activity, by stimulating subsets of axons within the sciatic nerve with low thresholds and high selectivity and by modulating the retinal activity with high precision. The graphene thin film technology I describe here has the potential to become the new performance benchmark for the next generation of neural implant technology.

Date of Award	11 Feb 2021
Original language	English
Supervisor	Garrido Ariza José Antonio (Director) & D. Jimenez (Tutor)