Introduction
Microprobes for Life Science is proud to offer Platinum Group’s EPIC coating technology as a standard option for most of our single and multi-channel array systems. EPIC (or Electrodeposited Platinum Iridium Coating) employs a versatile and proprietary technique to coat the contacts of an electrode or array with a platinum-iridium alloy thin film with an extremely high-surface-area textured surface, modulating its electrochemical properties to provide superior stimulation and recording performance.
Features
- Electrochemically deposited 60/40 wt% platinum-iridium thin film.
- Nano-textured to provide extremely large effective surface area with no change in contact size, reducing impedance by up to an order of magnitude or more.
- Deposition process uses no cytotoxic additives, and coating has been demonstrated to exhibit no significant increase in inflammatory response after over 6 months of in vivo implantation in cortex (vs uncoated)
- Proven improvement to neural unit recording capability in terms of SNR and yield, as published in a peer-reviewed study (Cassar et al, Biomaterials 205 (2019) 120-132).
A - Sample GFAP section near electrode tip for animal.
B - Sample ED1 section near electrode tip for animal.
B - The impedance at 1kHz for coated and uncoated electrodes
E - The cathodic charge capacity of the coated an uncoated electrodes calculated from the anodic to cathodic sweep of the cyclicl voltammetry
A - Average ED1
B - GFAP immunofluorescence intensity around the electrode-tissue interface, binned into fice 22 µm regions
C - Single frequency (1kHz) mean impedance Z in vivo
