Technologies
This technology is an optically-powered complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chip designed for minimally-invasive electrophysiological measurements and intracellular monitoring of biological systems.
Implantable and injectable integrated circuits (IC’s) provide great promise for opening up functionalities in life science research and future device applications. However, implementing a fully implantable system is difficult due to issues with device size, power delivery, and communication. Ideally, devices are less than ten microns in each dimension, allowing the ICs to be injectable and potentially diffusible through tissue. Furthermore, while wireless power delivery methods using radio-frequency and ultrasound exist, they are constrained by the device’s size and required proximity to external transducers, making such technology difficult to implement at the micron scale.
This technology is an injectable IC chip that can be powered wirelessly by visible light and is less than ten microns in each dimension. The small size of the chip is accomplished through chip-thinning techniques. Integrated photovoltaic cells allow incident light on the chip to be converted into usable electrical power. Additionally, quantum dot capacitors can be used to perform optical data transfer via fluorescence modulation, thereby yielding optical signals which can be captured by a variety of imaging tools such as cameras on fluorescent microscopes. As such, the size and wireless power harvesting capabilities of this technology allow for IC chips to be injected directly into tissue and potentiate a class of fully-injectable electronic devices.
IR CU16181
Licensing Contact: Greg Maskel