Design and Implementation of a Micro Structure Printer for Rapid Prototyping of Microimplantable Medical Devices

摘要

In medical industry in the last decade microimplantable systems continuously gain in importance. While various passive implants have been shrunken to the size of intra ocular lenses, the future market asks for a new kind of electrically active devices, so called intelligent implants. Such implants can stimulate nerves and therefore receive input from complex sensor systems, capturing data from the exterior or from inside the human body. For prototyping such implants and sensor systems, we developed a micro structure printer, which enables us to print structures from a variety of materials on different substrates, including mechanically flexible hydrophobic films.