Performance Analysis of Single Coreshell Magnetoelectric Microdevice for Electrical Stimulation

Abstract

Electrical stimulation of biological cells and tissues is an established technique to stimulate cells such as neurons and cardiomyocytes to enable the treatment of some disorders like Parkinson’s disease, cardiac arrhythmias, obstructive sleep apnea epilepsy, and depression. These devices use electronic circuits, batteries, and wires to transfer the stimulation signal to the target region. On the contrary, macro-scale devices such as scalp based bioelectrodes, surgical implants etc., require invasive surgery and constant fault monitoring. The use of standalone bio-compatible wireless micro-devices that can enable remote control and monitoring, powering and stimulation of cells and tissues and, deliver the stimulation therapy without additional circuits and battery, can be a significant advantage. In this paper, we introduce the concept of using magnetoelectric (ME) material composition to generate controllable electrical stimulation patterns for the Central Nervous System (CNS) stimulation therapy. We propose the potential use of ME structures in multi-modal resonant frequencies, for active stimulation. A spherical ME coreshell microdevice is designed and the Multiphysics numerical computations are used to evaluate the strain induced voltage on the device by using a remote magnetic bias and alternating magnetic field. It is shown that using the ME device in the resultant strain mode can create a sufficient voltage gradient that can potentially be used for wireless stimulation.