Emerging System Manufaturing Process for Innovative Titanium Medical Implants – FESTIN

The FESTIN project aims to expand the worldwide leadership located in the Paris area around an ambitious and emerging development of bulk titanium based Micro-ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS).
This innovative technology has been initially thought to fix unresolved and highly limiting constraints in the design and fabrication of active implantable medical devices (AIMDs) such as pacemakers, neurostimulators and implantable pumps, cochlear or retinian implants, which are all using a biocompatible and hermetic titanium housing. This housing is however bulky and completely passive. Integrating titanium based MEMS into such housing enables to bring functionalities and to remove several layers of packaging and connections, thus paving the way to new generations of much less invasive and more manufacturable AIMDs.
On one hand, the FESTIN project will support transferring the MEMS technologies from silicon to titanium by developing a full set of technological processes comparable to the state of the art available in the silicon industry. These MEMS processes (organic or thin metallic film depositions, photolithography, etching...) involve physical and chemical reactions highly sensitive to the nature of the substrate (material, roughness, surface properties). Each of them thus poses deep scientific and technological challenges. The program will first focus on exploring novel deposition techniques of thick dielectric materials on titanium substrates, but will also possibly address the developments of any new technological bricks which may be required for the new intended Titanium MEMS designs.
On the other hand, the FESTIN project will within the 4 years bring high TRL level to the components already designed by the partners (implantable monolithic feedthroughs, implantable pressure sensors), by implementing test setups (specific fatigue benches and accelerated ageing studies) as well as advanced characterizations (morphology and surface analyses) in order to meet the severe requirements of the AIMD industry in terms of long term reliability and biocompatibility (up to 20 years implanted lifetime). These 2 families of components constitute solutions known to be rapidly and highly considered by AIMDs manufacturers (a long-term implantable pressure sensor has been subject to researches since more than a couple of decades). The partners will also run early feasibility on new titanium based MEMS concepts identified as candidates to other unmet needs of the biomedical industry. This will allow diversifying the portfolio of components and innovations, and to fill a rather virgin IP landscape. It will then evaluate the opportunities to propose this know how to other industrial sectors having already expressed interest in the technology.
The FESTIN project is composed of the Center for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies (C2N), which is part of the University Paris-Saclay, and the firm MISTIC SAS based at Issy-les-Moulineaux and founded in 2016 after exploratory works led with the C2N in the early 2010s. It leverages and strengthens an already existing partnership between these two entities, recognized as an exemplary and win-win public-private cooperation where the scientific and technological efforts of the academic partner are guided and then converted into an exploitation, industrialization and commercialization effort by the company.
Both technological and conceptual aspects of the program evidence the long term collaborative objectives, generating an unprecedented know-how and a strong potential of talent attraction towards these innovative medical technologies offering a highly societal and sustainable impact.