Flexible intramuscular micro tube electrode combining electrical and chemical interface.

With the rapidly developed micromachining technology, various kinds of sophisticated microelectrodes integrated with micro fluidic channels are design and fabricated for not only electrophysiological recording and stimulation, but also chemical drug delivery. As many efforts have been devoted to develop rigid microprobes for neural research of brain, few researchers concentrate on fabrication of flexible microelectrodes for intramuscular electrophysiology and chemical interfacing. Since crude wire electrodes still prevail in functional electrical stimulation (FES) and electromyography (EMG) recording of muscle, here we introduce a flexible micro tube electrode combining electrical and chemical pathway. The proposed micro tube electrode is manufactured based on polymer capillary, which provide circumferential electrode site contacting with electro-active tissue and is easy to manufactured with low cost.