Silk-Silicon Implantable Electronics Conform to Tissues, Then Melt Away

Implantable electronics like pacemakers are old hat, but these kinds of implants are limited by the fact that they must be encased to protect them from the body, and vice versa. But in the quest to make our bodies ever more bionic, researchers have now developed implantable silicon-silk electronics that almost dissolve completely inside the body, leaving behind nanocircuitry that could be used for improved electrical interfaces for nervous system tissues or photonic tattoos that display blood-sugar readouts on the skin’s surface. Most electronics must be “canned,” or encased so they don’t trigger irritation inside the body, and also so the body doesn’t interfere with the device’s performance. But by building an array of one millimeter-long, 250 nanometers-thick transistors on a thin silk substrate, the researchers have demonstrated that their circuitry is thin enough fly under the body’s immune reaction radar. The silk-silicon stamp can be laid directly onto biological...

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