Physical Foundations of Wireless, Battery-Free Miniature Implantable Bioelectronics

31st October 2024

Timing : 1 pm EST

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For a list of all talks at the NanoBio seminar Series Fall'24, see here


State of the art implantable bioelectronics for health and research applications require improvements. The major challenges include: 1) tethered connections for animal monitoring are prone to infection and induce stress; 2) wireless solutions for human use rely on batteries, occupying up to 90% of the device volume. Wirelessly powered/rechargeable options often rely on large subcutaneous modules, necessitating complex surgeries for implantation. Our group’s objective is to enable wireless and battery-less bioelectronic devices, making them extremely miniaturizable and long-lasting, paving the way for less invasive injectable bioelectronics, facilitating the use of soft and deployable devices, surgical micro-robotics, and ultra-miniature biosensors. To achieve this, we bridge recent advancements in three disciplines: the physics of wave control in complex media, conformal reconfigurable radiating surfaces, and implantable electromagnetic structures. Our work investigates the physical mechanisms governing the radiation efficiency of implantable bioelectronic devices deep within human body tissues. Based on our findings, we have developed and implemented novel electromagnetic structures. Our models identify key parameters and their quantitative relationships in various scenarios, enabling the calculation of specific electromagnetic design rules tailored to each application (e.g., electromagnetic source type, operating frequency, dimensions, and material properties). Our results demonstrate that the wireless efficiency and, therefore power budgets, of bioelectronics can be enhanced by more than an order of magnitude compared to conventional designs. This breakthrough has the potential to reshape biomedical research, leading to more effective treatments and providing valuable tools for researchers.



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Dr. Denys Nikolayev
French National Centre for Scientific Research
CNRS IETR (UMR 6164) Rennes
Denys Nikolayev received his M.Sc. degree summa cum laude in applied electromagnetics from Lviv Polytechnic National University, Ukraine, in 2008. He earned dual Ph.D. degrees in electronics from the IETR laboratory of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), France, and in electrical engineering from the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czechia, in 2017. In 2023, he obtained the "Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches" (HDR) degree from the University of Rennes, France.

He served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at imec/Ghent University, Belgium, until 2018, followed by a position of a Scientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, until 2020. He then joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a Senior Scientist (fr. chargé de recherche). Dr. Nikolayev's research focuses on the theoretical foundations and engineering of wireless bioelectronics.

Dr. Nikolayev’s work has been recognized with several awards, including the Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award from the Fondation Rennes. He is a laureate of the ERC Starting Grant (2024), the Eiffel Excellence Doctoral Fellowship and the recipient of the ANR–NRF PRCI Research Fellowship (2021), jointly awarded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, France, and the National Research Foundation, Singapore. Since 2022, Dr. Nikolayev has served as an elected member of the Section 8 of the French National Committee for Scientific Research.