Tuning drug delivery from conducting polymer films for accurately controlled release of charged molecules.

Spatio-temporally controlled drug release based on conducting polymer films offers a powerful technology to improve the tissue integration for implantable neuroprobes. We here explore the release efficiency of such systems in order to improve the understanding of the release mechanism and allow for optimized implementation of this technology into future drug release applications. By exposing drug loaded PEDOT coatings of different thicknesses to a multitude of release signals, along with optimizing the steps during the polymer synthesis, we could identify a highly reproducible electrostatically controlled drug release next to a slow diffusion driven release component.

Long-Term Stable Adhesion for Conducting Polymers in Biomedical Applications: IrOx and Nanostructured Platinum Solve the Chronic Challenge.

Conducting polymers (CPs) have frequently been described as outstanding coating materials for neural microelectrodes, providing significantly reduced impedance or higher charge injection compared to pure metals. Usability has until now, however, been limited by poor adhesion of polymers like poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) to metallic substrates, ultimately precluding long-term applications. The aim of this study was to overcome this weakness of CPs by introducing two novel adhesion improvement strategies that can easily be integrated with standard microelectrode fabrication processes.