Under the skin: A new breed of biomedical implant

Neuromodulation implants are primarily used to administer electrical stimulation in order to relieve pain. The biggest market today is for spinal cord stimulation (SCS), and this is where WISE is focusing much of its efforts.

Using a proprietary process called Supersonic Cluster Beam Implantation (SCBI), the flexible and stretchable implants are embedded with micro-circuitry. The circuitry is produced by firing nanoparticles of platinum and iridium at a polymeric substrate, with a miniature stencil guiding the pattern. This creates a conductive metal-polymer nanocomposite layer below the surface.

With the company having recently closed a €3 million round of series A financing, we caught up with Dr Ravagnan to ask him about the engineering processes involved in the implants, why he believes the technology is a leap forward, and what other uses the implants might have.

Can you tell us about the makeup of the polymeric substrate used in SCBI?

The polymeric substrate is in the form of a sheet (that either we buy already formed or we produce in-house), of any thickness ranging potentially from a few tens of microns to many centimetres. The dimensions can vary freely up to several tens of centimetres. The substrate is then fixed to a metallic plate that is mounted on the holder of the metallization apparatus (which is motorised in order to move the sample on the plane orthogonal to the nanoparticle beam axis).