Title: Fabrication of biocompatible enclosures for an electronic implant using 3D printing

Authors: Scott Adams; Abbas Z. Kouzani; Mazher Mohammed; Clara Usma; Susannah J. Tye

Addresses: School of Engineering, Deakin University, Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, Victoria 3216, Australia ' School of Engineering, Deakin University, Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, Victoria 3216, Australia ' School of Engineering, Deakin University, Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, Victoria 3216, Australia ' School of Engineering, Deakin University, Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, Victoria 3216, Australia ' Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 55905, USA

Abstract: A variety of different approaches have been employed to enable implantation of electronic medical microdevices. A novel method of producing low-cost, rapidly fabricated implantable enclosures from biocompatible silicone is presented in this paper. This method utilises 3D computer-aided design software to design and model the enclosures prior to fabrication. The enclosures are then fabricated through additive manufacturing from biocompatible silicone using a 3D bioprinter. In this paper, four different implantable enclosure designs are presented. A prototyping stage with three different prototypes is described, these prototype enclosures are then evaluated through submersion and operation tests. A final design is developed in response to the obtained results, and then evaluated in a long term temperature controlled submersion test. The evaluation results are presented and discussed. Several areas of future works are identified and discussed.

Keywords: 3D printing; rapid prototyping; biocompatibility; implant enclosures; medical microdevices; deep brain stimulation; DBS; biocompatible enclosures; electronic implants; biocompatible silicone; 3D CAD; additive manufacturing; 3D bioprinters.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRAPIDM.2016.078742

International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing, 2016 Vol.6 No.1, pp.17 - 32

Received: 12 Nov 2015
Accepted: 31 May 2016
Published online: 01 Sep 2016 *

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