Multifunctional flexible parylene-based intracortical microelectrodes

Delivering drugs directly to the brain tissue opens new approaches to disease treatment and improving neural interfaces. Several approaches using neural prostheses have been made to deliver drugs directly with bypassing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) [1, 2]. In this paper, we propose a new polymer-based flexible microelectrode with drug delivery capability. The probe was fabricated and tested for electrical and fluidic functionality in early stage design. In vivo chronic recording experiments succeeded in demonstrating the in vivo reliability of the probe. Successful in vivo experiments confirm the suitability of the probes as implantable chronic recording devices with robust fluid delivery function.