Silicon Carbide Technology for Advanced Human Healthcare Applications

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a highly robust semiconductor material that has the potential to revolutionize implantable medical devices for human healthcare, such as biosensors and neuro-implants, to enable advanced biomedical therapeutic applications for humans. SiC is both bio and hemocompatible, and is already commercially used for long-term human in vivo applications ranging from heart stent coatings and dental implants to short-term diagnostic applications involving neural implants and sensors. One challenge facing the medical community today is the lack of biocompatible materials which are inherently smart or, in other words, capable of electronic functionality. Such devices are currently implemented using silicon technology, which either has to be hermetically sealed so it does not directly interact with biological tissue or has a short lifetime due to instabilities in vivo. Long-term, permanently implanted devices such as glucose sensors, neural interfaces, smart bone and organ implants, etc., require a more robust material that does not degrade over time and is not recognized and rejected as a foreign object by the inflammatory response. SiC has displayed these exceptional material properties, which opens up a whole new host of applications and allows for the development of many advanced biomedical devices never before possible for long-term use in vivo. This paper is a review of the state-of-the art and discusses cutting-edge device applications where SiC medical devices are poised to translate to the commercial marketplace.

State-of-the-art silicon carbide diode dosimeters for ultra-high dose-per-pulse radiation at FLASH radiotherapy

“…On the other hand, the lower SiC sensitivity per active volume and deposited energy makes it a better choice for applications where a large signal might saturate the semiconductor, like UHDR beam dosimetry. In addition, unlike silicon, SiC is both bio and hemocompatible and therefore is a very promising material for the realisation of advanced biomedical devices (Saddow 2022). The possibility of integrating very thin graphene layers into the SiC surface to act as electrical contacts instead of metals has recently been demonstrated (Ugobono et al 2022), which opens the door to fabricating devices that are functional at high temperatures, have very thin entrance windows, and are overall metal-free.…”

First-principles study of the effect of pressure on the physical properties of PbC

“…When C interacts with C their bonds are symmetric, but C with another IV-group element form non-symmetric bonds, due to the size and chemical potential differences, creating the ionic behavior [2]. These compounds have attracted great attention due to their potential technological applications [3][4][5]. Silicon carbide (SiC) is the most important among the IV-group binary carbides.…”

Defect Profiling of Oxide‐Semiconductor Interfaces Using Low‐Energy Muons

“…[1] Being a robust and biocompatible material that can sustain harsh environments, SiC is also used in the biomedical field. [2] More recently, SiC proved to be a DOI: 10.1002/admi.202300209 promising platform for quantum technologies, with implementation, as single photon emitter, for quantum communication and sensors. [3,4] With respect to other semiconductors, an advantage of Si and SiC is their ability to form native silicon dioxide (SiO 2 ).…”