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Insulation question
Could anyone please tell me how dermal or epidermal tissue could be insulated to protect against electricity from an implant?
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Are you thinking of a taser implant? Or just sub dermal wires?
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It's for a chip implant in my hand but I'd more information about insulating skin against electricity to have a good idea about what other projects are possible.
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Well, it depends on what kind of implant it is. If it's wiring, it could be a bit difficult, but if it's a chip or a board of some sort, a silicone coat might work. What sort of implant is it going to be?
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I haven't mind up my mind yet, I want to know how to insulate my skin before I make a choice.
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Insulate the implant, as opposed to your skin. It's a lot easier to think about protecting something from the outside, then making the environment hosting the object protect the object.
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Okay though could you please tell me how skin could be insulated? For future reference.
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That's slightly trickier. When you're engineering insulation, at the very least, you need to know what voltage you're working with. Since it's an implant, probably fairly low voltages. So, silicone gel coating is probably your best bet, in terms of ergonomics, insulating properties, and biocompatibility. If you choose to use silicone, you'll need to decide how you want to apply it. @Glims has done some work experimenting with alternative silicone coats, so he could probably give you better advice on that, though.
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Thank you!
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I've been working with silicone a bit and I'm becoming more and more convinced it's a terrible choice for these types of implants. Silicone allows the passage of fluids and vapor. Its slow, but unless your looking for an implant period of 6 mo. or less, your base material is going to be exposed. This is assuming a very thick layer as well. Very thin sprayed on layers are simply begging for failure. In the case of something like a Haworth magnet, this isn't too big of a deal because of the underlying material but for circuits or batteries you'll not only have the potential for failure, you'll also get outflow of potentially toxic material. Something like Parylene is a far better choice. Teflon is great if your project doesn't react to heat. Silicone over parylene would provide both cushion and a water impervious layer. When you have specifics down, let me know and I might have other suggestions. If all else fails, a titanium enclosure is damn near fool proof.
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You'll want a titanium enclosure for EMC reasons anyway (or some other well conducting material but titanium is the biosafe option for that). With only the antenna or/and electrode wires leaving the case.
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I doubt you'll have problems at safe levels, but are there any areas you'd particularly want to avoid with a titanium case implanted(e.g. High-power microwave transmission installations, induction stoves)? Also, how would one insulate the circuit in the titanium case against shorting on the case?
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If you operate your implant (and that means your body,too) inside a microwave field of multiple kW you have more urgent troubles than the titanium from the implamt. For example the water in your body starting to boil.
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