Neural Implants, Packaging for Biocompatible Implants, and Improving Fabricated Capacitors

We have completed the circuit design and packaging procedure for an NIH-funded neural implant, called a MOTE (Microscale Optoelectronically Transduced Electrode). Neural recording implants for mice have greatly advanced neuroscience, but they are often damaging and limited in their recording location. This project will result in free-floating implants that cause less damage, provide rapid electronic recording, and increase range of recording across the cortex. A low-power silicon IC containing amplification and digitization sub-circuits is powered by a dual-function gallium arsenide photovoltaic and LED. Through thin film deposition, photolithography, and chemical and physical etching, the Molnar Group and the McEuen Group (Applied and Engineering Physics department) will package the IC and LED into a biocompatible implant approximately 100µm3. The IC and LED are complete and we have begun refining this packaging procedure in the Cornell NanoScale Science & Technology Facility. ICs with 3D time-resolved imaging capabilities can image microorganisms and other biological samples given proper packaging. A portable, flat, easily manufactured package would enable scientists to place biological samples on slides directly above the Molnar group’s imaging chip. We have developed a packaging procedure using laser cutting, photolithography, epoxies, and metal deposition. Using a flip-chip method, we verified the process by aligning and adhering a sample chip to a holder wafer. In the CNF, we have worked on a long-term metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor characterization project. Former Fellow and continuing CNF user Kwame Amponsah developed the original procedure for the capacitor fabrication, and another former fellow, Jonilyn Longenecker, revised the procedure and began the arduous process of characterization. MIM caps are useful to clean room users as testing devices to verify electronic characteristics of their active circuitry. This project’s objective is to determine differences in current-voltage (IV) and capacitor-voltage (CV) relationships across variations in capacitor size and dielectric type. This effort requires an approximately 20-step process repeated for two-to-six varieties (dependent on temperature and thermal versus plasma options) of the following dielectrics: HfO2, SiO2, Al2O3, TaOx, and TiO2.