Preliminary study on printed microelectrode array by Aerosol Jet Printing technology

Nowadays, additive manufacturing (AM) is a promising process for the fabrication of devices for biomedical applications. AM offers technologies capable of respecting the main requirements of biocompatibility and safety for medical devices. The microelectrode arrays (MEAs) have become a valuable tool in the study of electrophysiological analysis of in vitro electrogenic cells (i.e. cardiac and neuronal cells). Common MEAs are based on microfabrication techniques produced on rigid substrates with standard metal, making them expensive tools. Aerosol-jet printing (AJP) can be an alternative fabrication strategy for reducing the costs of MEAs production. AJP allows the development of customized devices and realizes an easy and reliable patterning of conducting polymers with high resolution compared to other ink printing techniques. Here we present a novelty fabrication strategy for the realization of printed MEAs. The preliminary results demonstrate the feasibility of the Aerosol Jet Printing techniques for the fabrication of MEA with a focus on the conductive tracks and the passivation layer deposition i.e. the first and second layer of the electrode array realization.