A Novel Low-cost Method for Fabrication of 2D Multi-electrode Array (MEA) to Evaluate Functionality of Neuronal Cells

In this paper, a fabrication method for two-dimensional multi-electrode arrays (MEAs) using inexpensive material and method is proposed. The focus in this work is on the design and fabrication of 2D Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) using metallic electrodes on a silica substrate. Titanium/Gold multi-electrode arrays containing 60 electrodes with optimized metal thicknesses and 30 μm diameter, covered with thin modified SU-8 insulator layer as biocompatible material have been designed and manufactured using the standard photolithography-based microfabrication method. The utilization of affordable and more accessible materials and simpler techniques can be mentioned as the distinct point of the proposed method. Using these multi-electrode arrays, it is possible to either record or stimulate cells by accessing multiple sites of cell tissues and collect signals from the sources around each electrode simultaneously. Precisely adjusting the size, distance, and the number of microelectrodes causes the high measurement selectivity and reliability which has been taken into account in the design of the microelectrodes. In this study, by implementing the proposed system, we manufactured a preliminary representative MEA and the bio-compatibility of the manufactured MEA is going to be evaluated by neural cells, obtained from rat cortices. The main aim of this study is comparison of our inexpensive strategy with other approaches.