Micro antennas for implantable medical devices

Implantable devices are becoming smaller and smaller, making possible new solutions for the current challenges in medical diagnosis, treatment and monitoring. These implantable solutions may rely on miniaturized devices that can be controlled and powered via wireless communications. Due to the high degree of system miniaturization very small antennas are required pushing the communication range to the high frequencies domain. Nevertheless, since human body tissue attenuation increases with frequency it is challenging to obtain an efficient wireless link. This paper reports the design of micro-device integrated antennas suitable for energy harvesting applications. These devices, and integrated antennas, can be fabricated by combining self-folding methods with conventional multi-layer lithography, allowing precise patterning of two dimensional templates that can transform into three dimensional antenna with wireless capabilities.