
Electronics That Fight Infection and Dissolve Away - ari_elle
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/09/27.aspx
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spatten
Funny, my initial assumption before reading the article was that it was going
to be something nano-scale.

Also, the article is focussing solely on the "this stuff dissolves in water
and is bio-compatible" part of the equation, pretty much ignoring the "fight
infection" part.

So I'm guessing that this is just a proof-of-concept of the "electronics that
dissolve in the human body without killing you" part of a complete solution
(which is very cool, don't get me wrong...). If so, is the fighting infection
part a solved or trivial problem? I'm trying to figure out how a chip inserted
into a single point in a body fights infection.

~~~
pygy_
The article is based on a paper behind paywall at the Science website[0],
whose abstract states that their proof of concept application is " _an
implantable transient device that acts as a programmable nonantibiotic
bacteriocide_ ".

So the problem is solved, but you'll have to pay to get the details. Here's
the abstract:

> _A Physically Transient Form of Silicon Electronics_

> Suk-Won Hwang, Hu Tao, Dae-Hyeong Kim, Huanyu Cheng, Jun-Kyul Song, Elliott
> Rill1, Mark A. Brenckle, Bruce Panilaitis, Sang Min Won, Yun-Soung Kim,
> Young Min Song, Ki Jun Yu, Abid Ameen, Rui Li, Yewang Su, Miaomiao Yang,
> David L. Kaplan, Mitchell R. Zakin, Marvin J. Slepian, Yonggang Huang,
> Fiorenzo G. Omenetto, John A. Rogers

> _A remarkable feature of modern silicon electronics is its ability to remain
> physically invariant, almost indefinitely for practical purposes. Although
> this characteristic is a hallmark of applications of integrated circuits
> that exist today, there might be opportunities for systems that offer the
> opposite behavior, such as implantable devices that function for medically
> useful time frames but then completely disappear via resorption by the body.
> We report a set of materials, manufacturing schemes, device components, and
> theoretical design tools for a silicon-based complementary metal oxide
> semiconductor (CMOS) technology that has this type of transient behavior,
> together with integrated sensors, actuators, power supply systems, and
> wireless control strategies. An implantable transient device that acts as a
> programmable nonantibiotic bacteriocide provides a system-level example._

\--

0\. <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6102/1640.abstract>

