Microelectronic packaging for retinal prostheses

Abstract

The retinal prosthesis initiative at the Biomimetic Microelectronic Systems (BMES) center, an National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERC) at the University of Southern California (USC), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of California, Santa Cruz, calls for a novel set of packaging technologies for bioimplant device construction. The testbed requires high-resolution electrical stimulation of the remaining functional neurons of the macula and a mechanically and electrically robust method for interconnecting application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) with the interfacial electrodes. Our epiretinal prosthesis comprises a video-capture and data-encoding mechanism, a radio-frequency (RF) coil system for power and data transmission and recovery, an analog/digital ASIC with driving electronics, and a flexible retinotopic electrode array for neural stimulation, all in a chronically implantable, hermetically sealed package. Here, we discuss an innovative parylene-based high-density chip-level integrated interconnect (CL-I2) packaging system for retinal implants.

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