Highly Stretchable Electrodes Based on Gold Films with Cyclic Stability for Electrocorticogram Recordings

摘要

Stretchable electrodes have expanding applications in the areas of human-machine interface, biomedical devices and smart wearables. Due to the demanding requirements of various applications, it is desirable for the stretchable electrodes to have excellent performances such as stretchability and cyclic stability since electrodes are often subject to cyclic strain in working conditions. In this work, we developed a type of highly stretchable electrodes based on gold films and elastic substrates. With an improved fabrication process, stretchability larger than 110% was achieved due to the characteristic microstructure of micro and nano cracks in gold films. The electrodes showed a great cyclic stability with repeatable and stable resistance-strain response for more than 1000 times under the cyclic strain of 80%. In addition, microelectrode arrays were also fabricated by using the above technique. With the microelectrode arrays implanted on the surface of brain cortex of rats, clear electrocorticogram (ECoG) with a high spatial resolution was recorded. This preliminary work demonstrated that the novel stretchable electrodes and microelectrode arrays would have a great application potential in the area of neural-machine interface and bioelectronics.