This brief presents an ultrasonically powered micro-system for deep tissue optogenetic stimulation. The developed system is composed of a Base for Powering and Controlling (BPC) and an implantable Dust for optogenetics and drug delivery. The Dust consists of a piezoelectric crystal, a rectifier chip, and a micro-scale custom-designed light-emitting-diode (μ LED) integrated, miniaturized, and envisioned to be used for freely moving animal studies. The proposed Dust operates in frequencies up to 5 MHz, power levels in the 0-10 mW range, achieves start-up within 1.8~μ s at 2.9 MHz operating frequency at 14.4 mW/mm2 ultrasound power density, and 98.1% chip efficiency at 2 mW input power. With the BPC implemented and attached to ( 500~μ m )3 PZT4 crystals, set to 60 V at 2.8 MHz operating frequency at 3 mm distance in demineralized water, the dust delivered up to 6 mW to its load (μ LED for optogenetics), which translates to 0.11% total system efficiency.

@en

This letter presents an ultrasonically powered dual-wavelength optogenetic device that targets simultaneous excitation and inhibition of neural activities, or in a broader sense, optical stimulation in two distinct wavelengths for targeting different populations of neurons. This can be applied to a variety of neurological disorders. The device features a load regulator circuit that shares the available power budget between two LEDs in a power-efficient and controlled way suppressing the need for adaptive matching and overvoltage protection circuits. Furthermore, the regulator circuit is capable of detecting power burst availability on the device and generating a control signal, accordingly. For 5.25 -mW acoustic power at the device's surface, the rectified voltage, and the total current load of the system are regulated to 2.79 V and 600A , respectively. The maximum chip and device efficiencies of 92.5% and 31.8% are measured, respectively. The total die area in 180- nm CMOS technology nose and the estimated system volume are 0.16/2 and 0.572/3 , respectively.

@en

In this paper, we present a mathematical and simulational model of an ultrasound backscattering communication link for 1 mm³ mm-sized brain implants. The mathematical model and different simulations are validated by measurement. Furthermore, using a piezoelectric crystal and an ultrasound transducer in a water tank setup, two different ultrasound reflection-based modulation methods are presented and measurement results are discussed. We compare the model, simulation, and measurement to gain a better understanding of the channel response. The results shows the possibility of achieving a bandwidth of up to 140 kb/s using binary modulation and 280 kb/s with 4-level ASK.@en