Du Minghui, Huang Lu, Zheng Jiajun, Xi Yue, Dai Yi, Zhang Weida, Yan Wei, Tao Guangming, Qiu Jianrong, So Kwok-Fai, Ren Chaoran, Zhou Shifeng
State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices School of Materials Science and Engineering South China University of Technology Guangzhou 510640 China.
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Fibre Laser Materials and Applied Techniques Guangdong Engineering Technology Research and Development Center of Special Optical Fibre Materials and Devices Guangzhou 510640 China.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2020 Jun 9;7(15):2001410. doi: 10.1002/advs.202001410. eCollection 2020 Aug.
Functional probes are a leading contender for the recognition and manipulation of nervous behavior and are characterized by substantial scientific and technological potential. Despite the recent development of functional neural probes, a flexible biocompatible probe unit that allows for long-term simultaneous stimulation and signaling is still an important task. Here, a category of flexible tiny multimaterial fiber probes (<0.3 g) is described in which the metal electrodes are regularly embedded inside a biocompatible polymer fiber with a double-clad optical waveguide by thermal drawing. Significantly, this arrangement enables great improvement in mechanical properties, achieves high optical transmission (>90%), and effectively minimizes the impedance (by up to one order of magnitude) of the probe. This ability allows to realize long-term (at least 10 weeks) simultaneous optical stimulation and neural recording at the single-cell level in behaving mice with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR = 30 dB) that is more than 6 times that of the benchmark probe such as an all-polymer fiber.
功能探针是用于识别和操控神经行为的主要竞争者，具有巨大的科学和技术潜力。尽管功能性神经探针最近有所发展，但开发一种能够长期同时进行刺激和信号传导的柔性生物相容性探针单元仍是一项重要任务。在此，我们描述了一类柔性微型多材料纤维探针（<0.3克），其中金属电极通过热拉伸被规则地嵌入具有双包层光波导的生物相容性聚合物纤维内部。值得注意的是，这种结构能够显著改善机械性能，实现高光学传输（>90%），并有效降低探针的阻抗（降低一个数量级）。这种能力使得在行为小鼠的单细胞水平上实现长期（至少10周）同时进行光刺激和神经记录成为可能，其信噪比（SNR = 30 dB）比全聚合物纤维等基准探针高出6倍以上。
