Compact helical antenna for smart implant applications
Source abstract
Abstract
Smart implants are envisioned to revolutionize personal health care by assessing physiological processes, for example, upon wound healing, and communicating these data to a patient or medical doctor. The compactness of the implants is crucial to minimize discomfort during and after implantation. The key challenge in realizing small-sized smart implants is high-volume cost- and time-efficient fabrication of a compact but efficient antenna, which is impedance matched to 50 Ω, as imposed by the requirements of modern electronics. Here, we propose a novel route to realize arrays of 5.5-mm-long normal mode helical antennas operating in the industry-scientific-medical radio bands at 5.8 and 2.4 GHz, relying on a self-assembly process that enables large-scale high-yield fabrication of devices. We demonstrate the transmission and receiving signals between helical antennas and the communication between an antenna and a smartphone. Furthermore, we successfully access the response of an antenna embedded in a tooth, mimicking a dental implant. With a diameter of ~0.2 mm, these antennas are readily implantable using standard medical syringes, highlighting their suitability for in-body implant applications. Helical antennas that are just 5.5 millimetres long have been developed for use in smart medical implants by scientists in Germany. Smart implants are set to transform personal health care by monitoring physiological processes and relaying data to medical workers. It is critical for such implants to be compact, but miniaturizing antenna has proved challenging. Now, researchers based in Dresden have applied strain engineering to polymer–metal heterostructures to achieve large scale high yield fabrication of compact helical antennas that are about five times smaller than conventional two-dimensional dipole antennas. They demonstrate transmission and reception of signals between a pair of antennas as well as between an antenna and smartphone. They also show that the antenna can be addressed when embedded in a tooth model. The small size of the antennas permits them to be implanted using standard medical syringes. We fabricated compact helical antenna operating in the industry-scientific-medical radio band. With a total length of only 5.5 mm, it is about five times smaller compared with the conventional dipole antenna. The transmission and receiving signals between helical antennas and the communication between a helical antenna and a smartphone is reported. Owing to the shape and dimensions, we successfully demonstrate the possibility to address the antenna, when embedded in a tooth, as well as to implant the antenna using standard medical syringes. These demonstrations highlight the potential of helical antennas for medical applications as components of smart system implants.
Source: openalex_inverted_index · Quality: baseline
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Wireless Body Area Networks · Antenna Design and Analysis · Wireless Power Transfer Systems
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
References (49)
Show source-provided references
1. Cao, H., Rao, S., Tang, S. J., Tibbals, H. F., Spechler, S. & Chiao, J. C Batteryless implantable dual-sensor capsule for esophageal reflux monitoring. Gastrointest. Endosc. 77, 649–653 (2013).10.1016/j.gie.2012.10.029 ↗
2. Young, D. J . Development of wireless batteryless implantable blood pressure-EKG-core body temperature sensing microsystem for genetically engineered mice real time monitoring. IEEE Int. Conf. Nano/Molecular Medicine and Engineering (NANOMED) 259–264 (2009).10.1109/NANOMED.2009.5559075 ↗
3. Mannoor, M. S., Tao, H., Clayton, J. D., Sengupta, A., Kaplan, D. L., Naik, R. R., Verma, N., Omenetto, F. G. & McAlpine, M. C Graphene-based wireless bacteria detection on tooth enamel. Nat. Commun 3, 763 (2012).10.1038/ncomms1767 ↗
4. Farra, R., Sheppard, N. F. Jr, McCabe, L., Neer, R. M., Anderson, J. M., Santini, J. T. Jr, Cima, M. J. & Langer, R. First-in-human testing of a wirelessly controlled drug delivery microchip. Sci. Transl. Med. 4, 122ra21 (2012).10.1126/scitranslmed.3003276 ↗
5. Wilson, B. S. & Dorman, M. F. Cochlear implants: current designs and future possibilities. J. Rehabil. Res. Dev. 45, 695–730 (2008).10.1682/JRRD.2007.10.0173 ↗
6. Hodgins, D., Bertsch, A., Post, N., Frischholz, M., Volckaerts, B., Spensley, J., Wasikiewicz, J. M., Higgins, H., Stetten, F. & Kenney, L. Healthy aims: developing new medical implants and diagnostic equipment. Pervasive Comput 7, 14–21 (2008).10.1109/MPRV.2008.8 ↗
7. Chen, G., Ghaed, H., Haque, R., Wieckowski, M., Yejoong, K., Gyouho, K., Fick, D., Daeyeon, K., Mingoo, S., Wise, K., Blaauw, D. & Sylvester, D . A cubic-millimeter energy-autonomous wireless intraocular pressure monitor. IEEE Int. Solid-State Circuits Conf. Digest of Technical Papers (ISSCC) 310–312 (2011).10.1109/ISSCC.2011.5746332 ↗
8. Rogers, J. A., Someya, T. & Huang, Y. Materials and mechanics for stretchable electronics. Science 327, 1603–1607 (2010).10.1126/science.1182383 ↗
9. Rizzo, J., Shire, D. B., Kelly, S. K., Troyk, P., Gingerich, M., McKee, B., Priplata, A., Chen, J., Drohan, W., Doyle, P., Mendoza, O., Theogarajan, L., Cogan, S. & Wyatt, J. L. Development of the Boston retinal prosthesis. Conf. Proc. IEEE Eng. Med. Biol. Soc 2011, 3135–3142 (2011).
10. Li, Y., Alam, M., Guo, S., Ting, K. & He, J. Electronic bypass of spinal lesions: activation of lower motor neurons directly driven by cortical neural signals. J. Neuroeng. Rehabil. 11, 107 (2014).10.1186/1743-0003-11-107 ↗
11. Borton, D. A., Yin, M., Aceros, J. & Nurmikko, A. An implantable wireless neural interface for recording cortical circuit dynamics in moving primates. J. Neural Eng. 10, 026010 (2013).10.1088/1741-2560/10/2/026010 ↗
12. Hochberg, L. R., Bacher, D., Jarosiewicz, B., Masse, N. Y., Simeral, J. D., Vogel, J., Haddadin, S., Liu, J., Cash, S. S., van der Smagt, P. & Donoghue, J. P. Reach and grasp by people with tetraplegia using a neurally controlled robotic arm. Nature 485, 372–375 (2012).10.1038/nature11076 ↗
13. Lebedev, M. A. & Nicolelis, M. A. Brain–machine interfaces: past, present and future. Trends Neurosci. 29, 536–546 (2006).10.1016/j.tins.2006.07.004 ↗
14. Bazaka, K. & Jacob, M. V. Implantable devices: issues and challenges. Electronics 2, 1–34 (2013).10.3390/electronics2010001 ↗
15. Kumar, V., Sharma, A., Kumar, A., Ahmad, M. & Gupta, G. Interaction of mobile phone waves with tissues of skeletal muscles and bone of human beings. J. Pharm. Biol. Sci 1, 2278–3008 (2012).
16. Swerdlow, A. J. Health Effects from Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields, Health Protection Agency, (2012).
17. Skrivervik, A., Zurcher, J.-F., Staub, O. & Mosig, J. PCS antenna design: the challenge of miniaturization. IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag. 43, 12–27 (2001).10.1109/74.951556 ↗
18. Balanis, C. A . in Modern Antenna Handbook 1203–1204 (John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
19. Kraus, J. D. Antennas, (McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1988).
20. Mizuno, H., Takahashi, M., Saito, K., Haga, N. & Ito, K . Design of a helical folded dipole antenna for biomedical implants in Proc. 5th European Conf. Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP) 3484–3487, IEEE, (2011).
21. Adams, J. J., Duoss, E. B., Malkowski, T. F., Motala, M. J., Ahn, B. Y., Nuzzo, R. G., Bernhard, J. T. & Lewis, J. A. Conformal printing of electrically small antennas on three-dimensional surfaces. Adv. Mater. 23, 1335–1340 (2011).10.1002/adma.201003734 ↗
22. Rogers, J. A., Jackman, R. J., Whitesides, G. M., Olson, D. L. & Sweedler, J. V. Using microcontact printing to fabricate microcoils on capillaries for high resolution proton nuclear magnetic resonance on nanoliter volumes. Appl. Phys. Lett. 70, 2464–2466 (1997).10.1063/1.118857 ↗
23. Jackman, R. J., Rogers, J. A. & Whitesides, G. M . Fabrication of small-scale cylindrical articles. Patent: US 5951881 A (1999).
24. Bell, D. J., Dong, L., Nelson, B. J., Golling, M., Zhang, L. & Grützmacher, D. Fabrication and characterization of three-dimensional InGaAs/GaAs nanosprings. Nano Lett. 6, 725–729 (2006).10.1021/nl0525148 ↗
25. Huang, T., Liu, Z., Huang, G., Liu, R. & Mei, Y. Grating-structured metallic microsprings. Nanoscale 6, 9428–9435 (2014).10.1039/C4NR00316K ↗
26. Mei, Y., Thurmer, D. J., Deneke, C., Kiravittaya, S., Chen, Y. F., Dadgar, A., Bertram, F., Bastek, B., Krost, A., Christen, J., Reindl, T., Stoffel, M., Coric, E. & Schmidt, O. G. Fabrication, self-assembly, and properties of ultrathin AlN/GaN porous crystalline nanomembranes: tubes, spirals, and curved sheets. ACS Nano 3, 1663–1668 (2009).10.1021/nn900580j ↗
27. Smith, E. J., Makarov, D., Sanchez, S., Fomin, V. M. & Schmidt, O. G. Magnetic microhelix coil structures. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 097204 (2011).10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.097204 ↗
28. Schmidt, O. G., Deneke, C., Kiravittaya, S., Songmuang, R., Heidemeyer, H., Nakamura, Y., Zapf-Gottwick, R., Müller, C. & Jin-Phillipp, N. Y. Self-assembled nanoholes, lateral quantum-dot molecules, and rolled-up nanotubes. IEEE J. Select. Top. Quantum Electron. 8, 1025–1034 (2002).10.1109/JSTQE.2002.804235 ↗
29. Yang, Z., Zhang, Y., Itoh, T. & Maeda, R. Flexible implantable microtemperature sensor fabricated on polymer capillary by programmable UV lithography with multilayer alignment for biomedical applications. J. Microelectromech. Syst 23, 21–29 (2014).10.1109/JMEMS.2013.2269674 ↗
30. Anacleto, P., Mendes, P., Gultepe, E. & Gracias, D . 3D small antenna for energy harvesting applications on implantable micro-devices in Antennas and Propagation Conference (LAPC), 2012 Loughborough 1–4 IEEE, (2012).
31. Schmidt, O. G. & Eberl, K. Nanotechnology: Thin solid films roll up into nanotubes. Nature 410, 168 (2001).10.1038/35065525 ↗
32. Prinz, V. Y., Seleznev, V. A., Gutakovsky, A. K., Chehovskiy, A. V., Preobrazhenskii, V. V., Putyato, M. A. & Gavrilova, T. A. Free-standing and overgrown InGaAs/GaAs nanotubes, nanohelices and their arrays. Phys. E Low Dimens. Syst. Nanostruct 6, 828–831 (2000).10.1016/S1386-9477(99)00249-0 ↗
33. Luchnikov, V., Sydorenko, O. & Stamm, M. Self-rolled polymer and composite polymer/metal micro- and nanotubes with patterned inner walls. Adv. Mater. 17, 1177–1182 (2005).10.1002/adma.200401836 ↗
34. Bassik, N., Abebe, B. T., Laflin, K. E. & Gracias, D. H. Photolithographically patterned smart hydrogel based bilayer actuators. Polymer 51, 6093–6098 (2010).10.1016/j.polymer.2010.10.035 ↗
35. Troyk, P. R. Injectable electronic identification, monitoring, and stimulation systems. Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 1, 177–209 (1999).10.1146/annurev.bioeng.1.1.177 ↗
36. Melzer, M., Karnaushenko, D., Lin, G., Baunack, S., Makarov, D. & Schmidt, O. G. Direct transfer of magnetic sensor devices to elastomeric supports for stretchable electronics. Adv. Mater. 27, 1333–1338 (2015).10.1002/adma.201403998 ↗
37. Mei, Y. F., Huang, G., Solovev, A. A., Bermúdez-Ureña, E., Mönch, I., Die, F., Reindl, T., Fu, R. K. Y., Chu, P. K. & Schmidt, O. G. Adv. Mater. 20, 4085 (2008).10.1002/adma.200801589 ↗
38. Bof Bufon, C. C., Gonzlez, J. D. C., Thurmer, D. J., Grimm, D., Bauer, M. & Schmidt, O. G. Self-assembled ultra-compact energy storage elements based on hybrid nanomembranes. Nano Lett. 10, 2506 (2010).10.1021/nl1010367 ↗
39. Grimm, D., Bof Bufon, C. C., Deneke, C., Atkinson, P., Thurmer, D. J., Schäffel, F., Gorantla, S., Bachmatiuk, A. & Schmidt, O. G. Rolled-up nanomembranes as compact 3D architectures for field effect transistors and fluidic sensing applications. Nano Lett. 13, 213 (2013).10.1021/nl303887b ↗
40. Böttner, S., Li, S., Jorgensen, M. R. & Schmidt, O. G. Vertically aligned rolled-up SiO2 optical microcavities in add-drop configuration. Appl. Phys. Lett. 102, 251119 (2013).10.1063/1.4812661 ↗
41. Martinez-Cisneros, C. S., Sanchez, S., Xi, W. & Schmidt, O. G. Ultracompact three-dimensional tubular conductivity microsensors for ionic and biosensing applications. Nano Lett. 14, 2219–2224 (2014).10.1021/nl500795k ↗
42. Dastjerdi, M. H. T., Djavid, M. & Mi, Z. An electrically injected rolled-up semiconductor tube laser. Appl. Phys. Lett. 106, 021114 (2015).10.1063/1.4906238 ↗
43. Jamal, M., Zarafshar, A. M. & Gracias, D. H. Differentially photo-crosslinked polymers enable self-assembling microfluidics. Nature Commun 2, 527 (2011).10.1038/ncomms1531 ↗
44. Bansal, R . in Handbook of Engineering Electromagnetics 259 (Springer Science & Business, 2004).10.1201/9780203026021 ↗
45. Slobozhanyuk, A., Lapine, M., Powell, D. A., Shadrivov, I. V., Kivshar, Y. S., McPhedran, R. C. & Belov, P. A. Flexible helices for nonlinear metamaterials. Adv. Mater. 25, 3409 (2013).10.1002/adma.201300840 ↗
46. Yan, C., Xi, W., Si, W., Deng, J. & Schmidt, O. G. Highly conductive and strain-released hybrid multilayer Ge/Ti nanomembranes with enhanced lithium-ion-storage capability. Adv. Mater. 25, 539 (2013).10.1002/adma.201203458 ↗
47. Deng, J., Ji, H., Yan, C., Zhang, J., Si, W., Baunack, S., Oswald, S., Mei, Y. & Schmidt, O. G. Naturally rolled-up C/Si/C trilayer nanomembranes as stable anodes for lithium-ion batteries with remarkable cycling performance. Angew. Chem. 125, 2382–2386 (2013).10.1002/ange.201208357 ↗
48. Mönch, I., Makarov, D., Koseva, R., Baraban, L., Karnaushenko, D., Kaiser, C., Arndt, K. F. & Schmidt, O. G. Rolled-up magnetic sensor: nanomembrane architecture for in-flow detection of magnetic objects. ACS Nano 5, 7436 (2011).10.1021/nn202351j ↗
49. Mei, Y., Solovev, A. A., Sanchez, S. & Schmidt, O. G. Rolled-up nanotech on polymers: from basic perception to self-propelled catalytic microengines. Chem. Soc. Rev. 40, 2109–2119 (2011).10.1039/c0cs00078g ↗