Abstract
With the rapid increase in the use of optogenetics to investigate nervous systems, there is high demand for neural interfaces that can simultaneously perform optical stimulation and electrophysiological recording. However, high-magnitude stimulation artifacts have prevented experiments from being conducted at a desirably high temporal resolution. Here, a flexible polyimide-based neural probe with polyethylene glycol (PEG) packaged optical fiber and Pt-Black/PEDOT-GO (graphene oxide doped poly(3,4-ethylene-dioxythiophene)) modified microelectrodes was developed to reduce the stimulation artifacts that are induced by photoelectrochemical (PEC) and photovoltaic (PV) effects. The advantages of this design include quick and accurate implantation and high-resolution recording capacities. Firstly, electrochemical performance of the modified microelectrodes is significantly improved due to the large specific surface area of the GO layer. Secondly, good mechanical and electrochemical stability of the modified microelectrodes is obtained by using Pt-Black as bonding layer. Lastly, bench noise recordings revealed that PEC noise amplitude of the modified neural probes could be reduced to less than 50 µV and no PV noise was detected when compared to silicon-based neural probes. The results indicate that this device is a promising optogenetic tool for studying local neural circuits.
Highlights
The electrochemical and signal recording performance were studied and compared to the reported work in Table 2, and the results show that this device is promising in high-resolution and artifact-free optogenetics
The morphology of the modified microelectrodes was observed by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
Figure values of Rct,ofZDR,ctC, dlZ,Dand d all Cincreased all increased after sonication, which indicates that the charge transfer process and the d after sonication, which indicates that the charge transfer process and the elecelectrochemical diffusion process slowed down, while the charge quantity distributed on trochemical diffusion process slowed down, while the charge quantity distributed on the the electrode-electrolyte interface and the electro-active surface area increased
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The emergence of optogenetic techniques in neuroscience has provided many new methods to study the effects of specific subpopulations of neurons on behavior Based on this technology, a widespread approach is to combine optical fiber with electrical recording microelectrodes [1,2,3,4]. Several other biodegradable materials have been proposed for the hardening of flexible probes, such as maltose and silk protein [39,40] These works have not yet integrated the function of optical stimulation, and the study of stimulation artifacts is relatively lacking. L. Wang et al has demonstrated that Pt-Black/PSS modification can decrease the PV and PEC noise of silicon-based probes to less than 250 μV under blue light irradiation of 38.2 mW/mm2 [44]. The electrochemical and signal recording performance were studied and compared to the reported work in Table 2, and the results show that this device is promising in high-resolution and artifact-free optogenetics
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