Healing wounds using wireless electronics

[suky]

The idea is to put a remote-controlled wireless device inside your wound. Then it begins releasing bacteria-killing heat and when it's finished it dissolves inside you because it's made from biocompatible materials.
It's yet to be made but scientists are not too far off.
 

The remote-controlled circuits are fashioned on super-thin silk and are responsive to radio frequencies. The team builds the capacitors, inductors, and resistors using water-soluble and biocompatible materials: silicon nanomembranes, which work as semiconductors; magnesium, which already plays an important role in biological systems; silicon dioxide or magnesium oxide as insulators; and silk, for the substrate upon which the circuits are crafted.

The system’s antenna — a crucial component for receiving the radio signals used to power the device — is made by layering magnesium onto silk. An ultra-thin version, with a 500-nm thick magnesium antenna, completely dissolves after two hours in deionized water at room temperature. A version that’s six times thicker can take a few days to dissolve.

To demonstrate the functionality of the device, Rogers and his colleagues built a power-harvesting circuit that attached the magnesium-on-silk antenna to an LED. When they switched on a radio transmitter placed as far as 6 feet away, the device converted about 15 percent of the radio waves it received into electrical energy, and the light blinked on. Then, when they placed the circuit in deionized water, it dissolved.

 

Example of degradation of the circuit board in deionized water.

 

Although we are making progress in bioelectronics, where could we find use for this? Nothing is mentioned about faster healing, it's only a "healing helper". Maybe it has a bigger purpose than just healing? What if in couple of years we have some similar device that would "heal" us from every disease that we have in our body at the time of putting that device inside us?

 

 

Source

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/remote-controlled-dissolvable-electronics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29

 

[lhikary]

used in war mostly imo

[TheArium]

I too could see it be used by soldiers. The question is whether it would be an implant that you have or an implant that you get only when wounded. I assume the latter since it degrades over times.

 

It's interesting, though. I can see that kind of technology in the future prolonging human life and youth.