**4. Conclusions**

Platinum, iridium and alloys of the two will continue to play a significant role in biomedical devices due to their biocompatibility, resistance to corrosion, and electrochemical properties under physiological conditions. Processing challenges for these metals will continue to drive research and development to discover novel and efficient ways to create structures and components that meet technological demands. Namely, simpler and more reliable ways to fabricate components will always drive innovation in this space.

Hermetical packaging for implantable microelectronics will continue to use platinum and iridium feed-throughs embedded in non-reactive, electrically insulating templates/substrates. As the size of microelectronic devices decreases, and the number of feed-throughs per unit area of package increases, novel approaches to fabricating feedthrough technologies in an effective and economical way will be required.

Here we report on platinum-iridium alloy nanowires electrochemically deposited in nanopo‐ rous aluminum oxide using a template synthesis technique. We believe that series of nano‐ wires, connected in parallel, can be used substituted for single conducting elements of equivalent cross-sectional area. However a careful understanding of how solution chemistry, deposition potential, and other parameters affect nanowires composition and morphology as well as feed-through hermeticity.

Hermeticity test results, as well as conductivity measurements, suggest that platinum-iridium nanowires may prove a viable platform for developing novel feed-through technologies. More investigation is needed to better correlate material properties of the deposited nanowires with resulting performance results. Additional work is also needed to develop ways of integrating these assemblies into entire chip package designs. However these results are promising.
