Blood type determination is an important clinical test that should be performed before any blood transfusion. However, in emergency situations, due to the patient's condition, there may not be enough time to determine the patient's blood type. In these cases, the O negative blood type is administered, because it causes less incompatibility risk to the patient. This paper presents a low-cost and portable device for ABO, Rh phenotype, reverse, and Cross-matching human blood typing, based on a spectrophotometric approach of the agglutination detection, with a fast response time (results in <;5 min). These features allow the device operation in mobile emergency units, outside conventional clinical laboratories, and close to the patient. It avoids the risk of incompatibility between the donor's and receptor's blood, improving the quality in healthcare services.

This work presents a flexible polyimide-based capacitive tactile sensing array with sub-millimeter spatial resolution. The sensor is conceived to be embedded in a multimodal artificial finger to detect and classify the texture morphology of an object's surface. The proposed tactile sensor comprises a 16x 16 array of capacitive sensing units. Each unit is composed of a parallel square electrode pairs (340 μm x 340 μm) separated by a compressible air cavity and embedded into a flexible polyimide substrate. Standard MEMS microfabrication techniques were used to develop the sensor. The polyimide device was covered with a thin compressible PDMS layer to tune the normal pressure sensitivity and dynamic range (225-430 μm thin PDMS layer resulting in 0.23-0.14 fF/kPa). The detection of the surface morphologies of a regular grating stamp for different orientation and a small metallic nut placed on the sensor is demonstrated, showing a 420 μm spatial resolution. The proposed sensor represents a novel capacitive tactile sensing device with a sub-mm resolution of human fingertip sensitivity. [2020-0188]

Multisite neural probes are a fundamental tool to study brain function. Hybrid silicon/polymer neural probes combine rigid silicon and flexible polymer parts into one single device and allow, for example, the precise integration of complex probe geometries, such as multishank designs, with flexible biocompatible cabling. Despite these advantages and benefiting from highly reproducible fabrication methods on both silicon and polymer substrates, they have not been widely available. This paper presents the development, fabrication, characterization, and in vivo electrophysiological assessment of a hybrid multisite multishank silicon probe with a monolithically integrated polyimide flexible interconnect cable. The fabrication process was optimized at wafer level, and several neural probes with 64 gold electrode sites equally distributed along 8 shanks with an integrated 8 µm thick highly flexible polyimide interconnect cable were produced. The monolithic integration of the polyimide cable in the same fabrication process removed the necessity of the postfabrication bonding of the cable to the probe. This is the highest electrode site density and thinnest flexible cable ever reported for a hybrid silicon/polymer probe. Additionally, to avoid the time-consuming bonding of the probe to definitive packaging, the flexible cable was designed to terminate in a connector pad that can mate with commercial zero-insertion force (ZIF) connectors for electronics interfacing. This allows great experimental flexibility because interchangeable packaging can be used according to experimental demands. High-density distributed in vivo electrophysiological recordings were obtained from the hybrid neural probes with low intrinsic noise and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

It is well known that neural activity can be modulated using a cooling device. The applications of this technique range from the treatment of medication-resistant cerebral diseases to brain functional mapping. Despite the potential benefits of such technique, its use has been limited due to the lack of suitable thermal modulators. This paper presents the design and validation of a solid-state cooler that was able to modulate the neural activity of rodents without the use of large and unpractical water pipes. A miniaturized thermal control solution based exclusively on solid-state devices was designed, occupying only 5 mm × 5 mm × 3 mm, and featuring the potential for wireless power and communications. The cold side of the device was cooled to 26 °C, while the hot side was kept below 43 °C. This range of temperatures is compatible with brain cooling and efficient enough for achieving some control of neural activity.

Implantable device miniaturization is a cornerstone in modern medicine and the key to unlock new and exciting applications for both the monitoring and the treatment of diseases. Such miniaturization can be facilitated resorting to miniaturized antennas that will support wireless communications, wireless power transfer and energy harvesting applications. The development of such new miniaturized devices is being supported by innovative fabrication and integration technologies that will lead to challenges in antenna design and characterization. In this paper, a miniaturized microantenna produced with a self-folding technique is presented, as well as its characterization challenges. The microcube antenna’s geometry (500×500×500 μm3) is optimized for operation inside biological tissue, and an interface board that allows interfacing the antenna with characterization equipment is presented. The antenna’s radiation pattern is obtained both experimentally and numerically, where a good agreement between both results was achieved.