 Tensioning and Fatigue Test of Tissue-Engineered Electronic Nerve Interface (TEENI) Devices Duc Tran and Ladan Jiracek-Sapieha Authors: Duc Tran, Ladan Jiracek-Sapieha, Jack Judy Faculty Mentor: Jack Judy, PhD College: College of Engineering Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering |
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AbstractTissue-engineered electronic nerve interface (TEENI) combines the field of Neural engineering and Tissue engineering to provide a neural interface that aims to record the bioelectronic neural signals of newly regenerated peripheral nerves. In this report, the mechanical strength of the PI threads will be investigated in order to prevent failure of implantation. Notable nodes of failure for the TEENI could be seen with tensioning of the device into the hydrogel encasing, and with fatigue during operation and post-operation. Thereby, a tensile test and a fatigue test was performed on the TEENI devices with the implementation of Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) to detect failure points of the polyimide threads. Although delicate due to size, the results indicate that the TEENI devices proved to be robust and should remain functional during normal manipulation during surgery and post-implantation. However, further testing is being conducted to validate the results.
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