Electrical stimulation of retinal ganglion cells with diamond and the development of an all diamond retinal prosthesis

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• 作者：Alex E. Hadjinicolaou^a ; ^b ; Ronald T. Leung^c ; ^d ; David J. Garrett^e ; ^{dgarrett@unimelb.edu.au} ; Kumaravelu Ganesan^e ; Kate Fox^e ; David A.X. Nayagam^c ; ^d ; Mohit N. Shivdasani^c ; Hamish Meffin^f ; ^h ; Michael R. Ibbotson^b ; ^g ; Steven Prawer^e ; Brendan J. O&rsquo ; Brien^b ; ^g
• 关键词：Bionic ; Retina ; Diamond ; Neural stimulation
• 刊名：Biomaterials
• 出版年：2012
• 期刊代码：7_01429612
• 类别：ms
• 出版时间：August, 2012
• 卷：33
• 期：24
• 页码：5812-5820
• 文件大小：1076 K

摘要

Electronic retinal implants for the blind are already a market reality. A world wide effort is underway to find the technology that offers the best combination of performance and safety for potential patients. Our approach is to construct an epi-retinally targeted device entirely encapsulated in diamond to maximise longevity and biocompatibility. The stimulating array of our device comprises a monolith of electrically insulating diamond with thousands of hermetic, microscale nitrogen doped ultra-nanocrystalline diamond (N-UNCD) feedthroughs. Here we seek to establish whether the conducting diamond feedthroughs of the array can be used as stimulating electrodes without further modification with a more traditional neural stimulation material. Efficacious stimulation of retinal ganglion cells was established using single N-UNCD microelectrodes in contact with perfused, explanted, rat retina. Evoked rat retinal ganglion cell action potentials were recorded by patch clamp recording from single ganglion cells, adjacent to the N-UNCD stimulating electrode. Separately, excellent electrochemical stability of N-UNCD was established by prolonged pulsing in phosphate buffered saline at increasing charge density up to the measured charge injection limit for the material.