Surface modification of parylene C and indium tin oxide for retinal and cortical prostheses

Restricted until 31 May 2010. In the world of prosthesis, the interaction between the material and the tissue is as essential as the efficiency of the device itself. Development in medical devices to improve health and health care would be immensely benefited by the ability to tailor the interface of tissue and material according to the specific needs of each device. In this thesis, works on surface modification of parylene C film and indium tin oxide (ITO) for retinal and cortical prosthesis are presented. As the works combine the multidisciplinary fields of chemistry, material science, and biology, chapter one is targeted to provide general background of the retinal and prosthesis, and the tissue-material interface that are required for the two prostheses. The second chapter will discuss how selective chemical surface modifications of parylene C thin film were carried out to introduce various functional groups and grafting of poly-N-isopropylacrylamide onto the parylene surface via atom transfer radical polymerization. The improvement of gold metal electrode and tissue adhesion onto the modified thin film will also be discussed in this chapter. Works on ITO surface will be describe in chapter three, including the selective surface modification of ITO, methods to functionalized ITO surface with cell adhesion molecules (CAMs), and the neuron cell culture results. Lastly, the appendix will discussed previous work on direct production of hydrogen peroxide utilizing viologen-palladium embedded in inert scaffold.