Abstract
Recently, many neural probes with various materials and shapes have been developed for treatments of cerebropathy and analyses of the brain function. Among these probes, silicon neural probe attracts much attentions because various kinds of functional structures such as microfluidic channel and optical waveguides can be fabricated by semiconductor micro- and nano-fabrication technologies. On the other hand, it was reported that the recording quality of the neuronal signals deteriorated when nervous tissues were damaged due to insertion and placement of the silicon neural probes. In this research, lower invasive Si neural probes with small shank cross-sections and sharpened tips were successfully fabricated using silicon anisotropic etching techniques. Also, insertion characteristics of the probes were carefully evaluated, indicating that the probe will cause less damages to nervous tissues in the brain.
