A new intracranial pressure sensor on polyimide lab-on-a-tube using exchanged polysilicon piezoresistors

A new intracranial pressure (ICP) sensor on polyimide lab-on-a-tube using exchanged polysilicon piezoresistive film has been designed, fabricated and successfully characterized in this work. Flexible polyimide film (Kapton) was used as the substrate for a lab-on-a-tube type microcatheter. Aluminum induced crystallization (AIC) process with low annealing temperature was utilized for the development of polysilicon film on polyimide substrate as the piezoresistive sensing element for a membrane based pressure sensor. The pressure sensor integrated with polyimide lab-on-a-tube shows a linearity of 0.996 and a sensitivity of 0.17 mV/mmHg in the low pressure range of 0~45 mmHg, which is very suitable for measuring the ICP.