Electronic retinal prostheses for stimulating retinal neurons are promising for vision restoration. However, the rigid electrodes of conventional retinal implants can inflict damage on the soft retina tissue. They also have limited selectivity due to their poor proximity to target cells in the degenerative retina. Here we present a soft artificial retina (thickness, 10 μm) where flexible ultrathin photosensitive transistors are integrated with three-dimensional stimulation electrodes of eutectic gallium–indium alloy. Platinum nanoclusters locally coated only on the tip of these three-dimensional liquid-metal electrodes show advantages in reducing the impedance of the stimulation electrodes. These microelectrodes can enhance the proximity to the target retinal ganglion cells and provide effective charge injections (72.84 mC cm⁻²) to elicit neural responses in the retina. Their low Young’s modulus (234 kPa), owing to their liquid form, can minimize damage to the retina. Furthermore, we used an unsupervised machine learning approach to effectively identify the evoked spikes to grade neural activities within the retinal ganglion cells. Results from in vivo experiments on a retinal degeneration mouse model reveal that the spatiotemporal distribution of neural responses on their retina can be mapped under selective localized illumination areas of light, suggesting the restoration of their vision.

用于刺激视网膜神经元的电子视网膜假体有望恢复视力。然而，传统视网膜植入物的刚性电极会对软视网膜组织造成损伤。由于它们与退行性视网膜中的目标细胞的距离很差，因此它们的选择性也有限。在这里，我们展示了一种柔软的人造视网膜（厚度为 10 μm），其中柔性超薄光敏晶体管与共晶镓铟合金的三维刺激电极集成在一起。仅局部涂覆在这些三维液态金属电极尖端上的铂纳米团簇在降低刺激电极的阻抗方面表现出优势。这些微电极可以增强与目标视网膜神经节细胞的接近度，并提供有效的电荷注入（72.84 mC cm ^-2）以引发视网膜中的神经反应。由于其液体形式，其杨氏模量较低（234 kPa），可以最大限度地减少对视网膜的损害。此外，我们使用无监督的机器学习方法来有效识别诱发的尖峰，以对视网膜神经节细胞内的神经活动进行分级。视网膜变性小鼠模型的体内实验结果表明，其视网膜上神经反应的时空分布可以在选择性局部光照射区域下进行映射，这表明它们的视力得到了恢复。