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Project

Water Vapor Transmission Rate (WVTR) tool for the characterisation of extremely good moisture barrier materials for medical micro-electronic implants and other applications very sensitive to moisture

The miniaturization of electronics enables their use in medical implants, although no small implantable package technique exists yet. Such a package should form an extremely good diffusion barrier, since it must at the same time protect the body from toxic substances emanating from the electronics and the electronics from body fluids possibly causing corrosion or other damaging reactions. Currently, implanted electronics are packaged in a thick titanium box, which is safe but rigid and big compared to the electronics inside. Ultra-small electronic implants would have many important advantages, such as minimally invasive implantation, fitting in very small body crevices, less body reaction upon implantation, less risk of infections, etc. To miniaturize the packages, ultrathin but very high quality diffusion barriers are currently under development, consisting of multilayers of biocompatible polymers and ceramic barrier films. The diffusion barrier properties of such a stack are characterized by its water vapor transmission rate (WVTR). For medical implants, an extremely low WVTR is required, ~ 500 000 times smaller than that of standard food packages! Common WVTR measurement tools as found in many research labs cannot handle such extremely low values and are furthermore very slow. To speed up the development of extremely good diffusion barriers for implanted electronics we need a very fast and extremely sensitive WVTR measurement system.

Date:1 May 2018 →  30 Apr 2022
Keywords:moisture barrier, micro-electronic implants
Disciplines:Nanotechnology, Design theories and methods