A study on conductive polymer electrodes for stimulating the nervous system

The purpose of this study is to develop an implantable micro-electrode array, which is made of the conductive polymer, polypyrrole (PPy). For that purpose, we tried to fabricate micro-patterns of PPy using the photochemical reaction of oxidative polymerization agents. Moreover, the conductivity of the micro-pattern was evaluated in terms of pattern width, length and polymerization time. Experimental results showed that we could fabricate the micro-patterns, which had a line width of 3 mum. This size was small enough for the purpose mentioned above. In addition, the conductivities of the micro-patterns were proportional to their width and length, and could be improved by suitable polymerization time. These results showed that the micro-patterns seemed to be applicable to a neural stimulating electrode.