TY - JOUR
T1 - 3D silicone rubber interfaces for individually tailored implants
AU - Stieghorst, Jan
AU - Bondarenkova, Alexandra
AU - Burblies, Niklas
AU - Behrens, Peter
AU - Doll, Theodor
N1 - Funding information: This project is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Cluster of Excellence ‘Hearing4All’ and Lower Austria Life Science grants LS 010–017.
PY - 2015/5/15
Y1 - 2015/5/15
N2 - For the fabrication of customized silicone rubber based implants, e.g. cochlear implants or electrocortical grid arrays, it is required to develop high speed curing systems, which vulcanize the silicone rubber before it runs due to a heating related viscosity drop. Therefore, we present an infrared radiation based cross-linking approach for the 3D-printing of silicone rubber bulk and carbon nanotube based silicone rubber electrode materials. Composite materials were cured in less than 120 s and material interfaces were evaluated with scanning electron microscopy. Furthermore, curing related changes in the mechanical and cell-biological behaviour were investigated with tensile and WST-1 cell biocompatibility tests. The infrared absorption properties of the silicone rubber materials were analysed with fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in transmission and attenuated total reflection mode. The heat flux was calculated by using the FTIR data, emissivity data from the infrared source manufacturer and the geometrical view factor of the system.
AB - For the fabrication of customized silicone rubber based implants, e.g. cochlear implants or electrocortical grid arrays, it is required to develop high speed curing systems, which vulcanize the silicone rubber before it runs due to a heating related viscosity drop. Therefore, we present an infrared radiation based cross-linking approach for the 3D-printing of silicone rubber bulk and carbon nanotube based silicone rubber electrode materials. Composite materials were cured in less than 120 s and material interfaces were evaluated with scanning electron microscopy. Furthermore, curing related changes in the mechanical and cell-biological behaviour were investigated with tensile and WST-1 cell biocompatibility tests. The infrared absorption properties of the silicone rubber materials were analysed with fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in transmission and attenuated total reflection mode. The heat flux was calculated by using the FTIR data, emissivity data from the infrared source manufacturer and the geometrical view factor of the system.
KW - 3D printing
KW - Customized neural implants
KW - Infrared curing
KW - Silicone rubber printing
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84929179404
U2 - 10.1007/s10544-015-9960-y
DO - 10.1007/s10544-015-9960-y
M3 - Article
C2 - 25975600
AN - SCOPUS:84929179404
SN - 1387-2176
VL - 17
JO - Biomedical microdevices
JF - Biomedical microdevices
IS - 3
ER -