A Soft Bioelectronic Platform
Abstract
Bioelectronics involves tool developments to advance our understanding of biology so that they will enhance human capabilities and performance, enable augmented human capabilities as well as better diagnosis and therapeutics methods. Since all underlying basic biological processes in living creatures are essentially through chemical and electronic signaling, significant efforts have been devoted to developing tools to precisely probe related information sensitively, selectively, and accurately at single-unit resolution. Important progress has been made in moving from in vitro cellular measurements to in vivo measurements. The next breakthrough, with powerful data analysis tools now available, will be tools that can directly measure biological signals at single-unit resolution (e.g. single cell, single muscle fiber etc.) over a large area to provide both biologically relevant information and global spatial and temporal information. This will allow us to better understand biological processes and their impact on biological functions. In order to precisely measure weak biological signals on dynamic and soft living creatures over a large area, an entirely new type of measurement platform needs to be developed. Therefore, this proposal focuses on the foundational electronics platform development that can be broadly applicable to various sensing modalities. Specifically, we propose development of multiplexing scanning active-matrix and low-noise amplifier electronics and use surface electromyogram (s-EMG) sensing as a model system to validate our electronics platform. Recording and analyzing bioelectronic signals from muscle activities can provide significant insights into biomechanics of biological systems. sEMG signals are important for better understanding the mechanics of the body, including evaluating muscle activation timing, force relationship and muscle fatigue. The ability to capture surface EMG signals with high resolution and high fidelity over a large area simultaneously at multiple locations will enable unprecedented understanding of biomechanics. However, current s-EMG systems are rigid and bulky making it challenging to collect high quality s-EMG signals. The key difference between this work and previous works is that the proposed soft electronic circuits, including active-matrix transistor array and low-noise amplifier, will be entirely made of soft materials, allowing high resolution large-scale mapping. Our approach reduces power consumption, complex circuits needed for compensating cross talks, the number of soft-rigid interfaces (i.e. less wiring between soft and rigid interfaces), motion artifacts and amplify signals near sensor. The use of entirely soft materials is essential to increase both the data quality and the conformability for comfortable wear, which will enable in vivo mapping of corporative muscle movement on freely moving living creatures. This contrasts with the current use of rigid electronics, where the electrodes need to be close to the rigid amplifier or large-size electrodes and thick wires are needed, which limits the resolution and area that can be studied. If successful, this work would be the first realization of soft active-matrix high-resolution, large-scale, scalable multi-lead electrophysiological mapping system. This platform is not only applicable to other sensing devices, such as chemical and biochemical sensors, it will enable the advancements on design and fabrication or soft stretchable electronic circuits, which can enable many light-weight and low profile electronics applications of interest to ARO. Such electronics can be applied to any soft living creatures or enable the control and signal processing for the construction of soft robotic systems. The availability of such a tool will also enable us to understand biology in an unprecedented way.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2023
- Source ID
- W911NF2310282
Entities
People
- Zhenan Bao
Organizations
- Army Contracting Command
- Stanford University
- United States Army