The mechanisms by which the brain produces, transmits, and processes information are related with the neuroscience and the neural engineering, involving the electrical activity of brain neurons. As a kind of implantable sensor, the micro neural probe is one of the highest resolution tools used to record the neural activity. It can record electrical potentials of single neurons without damaging the nervous system. In order to record tens of billions of neurons in the brain, the more electrodes that can be simultaneously implanted, the more details of information processing by brain can be obtained. Thus, smaller volume and higher integration are required. As a kind of mature micro machining materials, silicon enjoys excellent mechanical properties and good biological compatibility. The neural microelectrode array fabricated from silicon has the advantages of small size, high integration and good electrical consistency. In this paper, the structure characteristics, the preparation methods and the performance of several mainstream implanted silicon based neural microelectrodes are reviewed. Through the continuous optimization of the structure, and the improvement of the modification methods and methods, the number of electrodes on one probe can be increased greatly, and the biocompatibility of the silicon based neural electrode be improved dramatically. In the area of high-throughput neural recording, the silicon based electrode fabricated with standard CMOS process and integrated with amplifier, as well as the analogue to digital circuit is a hopeful method to realize large-scale neural recording in-vivo,to replace the point to point connection between the electrode array in body and the recording equipment outside body with several digital lines.

neural microelectrode  /  micro-wire electrode array  /  bulk silicon electrode  /  thin-film silicon electrode