Iridium Oxide-Platinum Nanocomposite Coating for Neural Electrode

摘要

Nanostructured coating materials provide high surface areas for effective signal transduction, addressing the challenge of high interfacial impedance and low cathodic charge storage capacity (CSC_c) caused by shrinking size of microelectrodes. In order to achieve safe, efficient and durable electrode performances, a novel iridium oxide/platinum (IrO_x/Pt) nanocomposite coating was introduced as a high-performance layer on the Pt substrate to provide extremely large surface, which significantly reduced electrical impedance by 93% and increased the CSC_c up to 54.14 mC×cm^-2 (15.21 times) compared with that of bare Pt electrodes. In addition, the IrO_x/Pt nanocomposites exhibited great mechanical and electrochemical stability, which was critical and beneficial for effective neural stimulation/recording electrodes for practical applications.