Magnetoelectric Bio-Implants Powered and Programmed by a Single Transmitter for Coordinated Multisite Stimulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a wireless magnetoelectric system for powering and programming multiple bio-implants using a single transmitter, enabling scalable, efficient, and coordinated multisite stimulation with reliable operation and individual control.

Contribution

The novel single-transmitter, multi-implant system design allows flexible deployment, improved efficiency, and scalable stimulation channels with robust wireless power transfer and individual programmability.

Findings

Wireless ME power transfer safely transmits milliwatt power over several centimeters.

System maintains high efficiency despite misalignment and movement.

Implants achieve 90% efficiency with fully programmable stimulation parameters.

Abstract

This article presents a hardware platform including stimulating implants wirelessly powered and controlled by a shared transmitter (TX) for coordinated leadless multisite stimulation. The adopted novel single-TX, multiple-implant structure can flexibly deploy stimuli, improve system efficiency, easily scale stimulating channel quantity, and relieve efforts in device synchronization. In the proposed system, a wireless link leveraging magnetoelectric (ME) effect is co-designed with a robust and efficient system-on-chip (SoC) to enable reliable operation and individual programming of every implant. Each implant integrates a 0.8-mm2 chip, a 6-mm2 ME film, and an energy storage capacitor within a 6.2-mm3 size. ME power transfer is capable of safely transmitting milliwatt power to devices placed several centimeters away from the TX coil, maintaining good efficiency with size constraints, and tolerating 60 degree, 1.5-cm misalignment in angular and lateral movement. The SoC robustly operates with 2-V source amplitude variations that spans a 40-mm TX-implant distance change, realizes individual addressability through physical unclonable function (PUF) IDs, and achieves 90% efficiency for 1.5-3.5-V stimulation with fully programmable stimulation parameters.