Silicon Carbide Biotechnology : A Biocompatible Semiconductor for Advanced Biomedical Devices and Applications

Silicon Carbide (SiC) is a wide-band-gap semiconductor biocompatible material that has the potential to advance advanced biomedical applications. SiC devices offer higher power densities and lower energy losses, enabling lighter, more compact and higher efficiency products for biocompatible and long-term in vivo applications ranging from heart stent coatings and bone implant scaffolds to neurological implants and sensors.

The main problem facing the medical community today is the lack of biocompatible materials that are also capable of electronic operation. Such devices are currently implemented using silicon technology, which either has to be hermetically sealed so it cannot interact with the body or the material is only stable in vivo for short periods of time.

For long term use (permanent implanted devices such as glucose sensors, brain-machine-interface devices, smart bone and organ implants) a more robust material that the body does not recognize and reject as a foreign (i.e., not organic) material is needed. Silicon Carbide has been proven to be just such a material and will open up a whole new host of fields by allowing the development of advanced biomedical devices never before possible for long-term use in vivo.

This book not only provides the materials and biomedical engineering communities with a seminal reference book on SiC that they can use to further develop the technology, it also provides a technology resource for medical doctors and practitioners who are hungry to identify and implement advanced engineering solutions to their everyday medical problems that currently lack long term, cost effective solutions.

S. E. Saddow is currently a Professor of electrical engineering and of molecular pharmacology and physiology in the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Florida (USF), Tampa. In 2009, he was jointly appointed in the USF College of Medicine to facilitate the development of 3C–SiC-based neuronal activation devices for insertion into the central nervous system. His group has demonstrated the biocompatibility of SiC and graphene to numerous cell lines in vitro and to the central nervous system of wild-type mice to 3C–SiC in vivo. He has more than 100 publications on SiC materials and devices and edited a book on SiC entitled Advances in Silicon Carbide Processing and Applications (2004). His research interests include the development of silicon carbide (SiC) thin films for high-field and high-power device applications. His most recent work has focused on the use of SiC for biomedical and MEMS applications.,Prof. Saddow is a Charter Member of the National Academy of Inventors.