File Name : supplemental figure 1.tif

Caption : supplemental figure 1.  schematic representation of soft electrode fabrication:  1) extrusion and curing of pdms/aedotron™ c3 blend; 2) precision bias cut of tip at 7o angle with diamond saw and evaporation of gold layer on one side of the wire; 3) encapsulation with insulating fs coating by multiple dip-coating; and 4) trimming of the tip to expose the conducting core.

File Name : supplemental figure 2.tif

Caption : supplemental figure 2.  stress–strain curves (in blue) of:  an unfilled prismatic specimen of pdms (med6607) of 1.28 mm2 cross-section area (a), a 7.1% filled 29g uncoated soft wire of 0.0221 mm2 cross-section area (b), and a 7.1% filled 29g soft wire coated with parylene c of 0.0126 mm2 cross-section area (c).  the slope of the tangent to the curve in the linear region (red line) is used to calculate the young’s modulus of the specimen.  an enlargement of c depicts the linear region (d).  pure med6607 (a) shows a classic elastomeric behavior with a relatively low modulus and high elongation at break (>400%).  the curve for the 7% filled 29g soft wire (b) shows significant noise because the load required to elongate an elastomeric wire of such a small diameter is very small and approaches the sensitivity of the instrument.  coating the soft wires with parylene c (c) dramatically increases stiffness and elongation at break.