UNS:Parylene-in-Parylene (PiP) integrated photonic systems for optogenetics in microelectrocorticography (uECoG)

植入式生物光子器件在体内传感、成像和光遗传神经刺激等领域的应用需求很大。研究人员建议设计、制造和表征完全由聚对二甲苯构建的紧凑、灵活和生物相容的光子结构。他们将把这种波导与开关和光源集成在一起，以实现完全可重构和集成的光子平台。一个全聚对二甲苯光子平台从未被发表过。这样的创新将产生立竿见影的影响，因为聚二甲苯通常用于超灵活的植入式系统。生物相容性和灵活的集成光子结构需要在长期应用时不会降解，分层或破裂。柔性光子学的最新进展主要依靠将导波器件转移到柔性衬底上来实现异质伪柔性光子器件。这种实现容易退化和失败，只适用于短期诊断植入物。提出的研究引入了一个新的平台来实现紧凑和灵活的集成光子器件，利用已经开发好的用于封装生物器件的生物相容性材料系统。这个方案包括一个精心构思的外展活动计划。

PI: Maharbiz, MichelProposal: 1512794Implantable biophotonic devices are highly in demand for applications such as in-vivo sensing, imaging, and optogenetic neural stimulation. The researchers propose to design, fabricate, and characterize compact, flexible, and biocompatible photonic structures built entirely from Parylene. They will integrate such waveguides with switches and light sources to realize a fully reconfigurable and integrated photonic platform. An all-Parylene photonic platform has never been published. Such an innovation would have immediate impact as Parylene is routinely used in ultra-flexible, implantable systems. Biocompatible and flexible integrated photonic structures are required that do not degrade, delaminate, or fall apart when used in chronic applications. Recent advances in flexible photonics mostly rely on transferring guided-wave devices to a flexible substrate to realize heterogeneous pseudo-flexible photonic devices. Such implementations are vulnerable to degradation and failure are only suitable for short-term diagnostic implants. The proposed research introduces a new platform for realizing compact and flexible integrated photonic devices leveraging an already well-developed biocompatible material system used for encapsulating biodevices. This program includes a well-conceived plan for outreach activities.