A team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee
from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST has developed
in vivo silicon-based flexible large scale integrated circuits (LSI) for bio-medical
wireless communication.
Silicon-based semiconductors have
played significant roles in signal processing, nerve stimulation, memory
storage, and wireless communication in implantable electronics. However, the
rigid and bulky LSI chips have limited uses in in vivo devices due to
incongruent contact with the curvilinear surfaces of human organs. Especially,
artificial retinas recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (refer
to the press release of FDA's artificial retina approval) require extremely
flexible and slim LSI to incorporate it within the cramped area of the human
eye.