Flexible Microelectrode Arrays with In-Plane Shielding for High Quality Electrocorticography Recording

We report a set of flexible microelectrode arrays (MEAs) with in-plane shielding designs that are capable of high quality electrocorticography (ECoG) signal acquisition. In this work, we have designed and fabricated two different shapes of shielding (i.e. hook-like and bell-type wires) and evaluated their shielding performances. With shielding, our flexible MEAs have better resistance to external disturbances while maintaining good conformability with high-quality signals. We have performed both simulation and in vitro experiments to evaluate the efficiency of two shielding designs, showing that bell-type devices have better performance. As a proof-of-concept, we implanted the device on the brain in a mouse model and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) neural signals have been recorded successfully.