Thomas E Flores

US Patent:

20220176105, Jun 9, 2022

Filed:

Mar 25, 2020

Appl. No.:

17/438807

Inventors:

- Stanford CA, US
Thomas Flores - Palo Alto CA, US

International Classification:

A61N 1/05
A61N 1/36

Abstract:

We provide a 3-dimensional configuration of an electrode array for neural cell stimulation designed to leverage migration of retinal cells into voids in the subretinal space. Walls surrounding each pixel align the electric field vertically, matching the orientation of bipolar cells in the retina, and thereby reduce the stimulation threshold. These walls also decouple the field penetration depth from the pixel width, enabling a decrease of the pixel size down to cellular dimensions. Inner retinal cells migrate into the electrode cavities, which enables very efficient stimulation. Due to 1-dimensional alignment of electric field along the cavities, stimulation threshold current density does not increase significantly with the reduced pixel size, unlike the quadratic increase seen with planar arrays.