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Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Study: Someday our bodies could 'talk' to gadgets - Tech News and Analysis [23Sep11] - 0 views

gigaom.com/...r-bodies-could-talk-to-gadgets

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 24 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • UW researchers say this new type of transistor could one day understand or even control body functions.
  • Materials scientists are looking at these proton-based microscopic transistors for future advances in prosthetics and biological sensing.
  • In the body, protons activate “on” and “off” switches and are key players in biological energy transfer. Ions open and close channels in the cell membrane to pump things in and out of the cell. Animals, including humans, use ions to flex their muscles and transmit brain signals. A machine that was compatible with a living system in this way could, in the short term, monitor such processes. Someday it could generate proton currents to control certain functions directly.
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  • A first step toward this type of control is a transistor that can send pulses of proton current. The prototype device is a field-effect transistor, a basic type of transistor that includes a gate, a drain and a source terminal for the current. The UW prototype is the first such device to use protons.
  • Because their device’s proton current can be switched on and off, it can act as its own kind of electronic current, according to Marco Rolandi, a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering. The transistor itself is “a twentieth the width of a human hair,” or about 5 microns wide. It is made of a compound, chitosan, found in both crab shells and squid pen (the structure inside a squid’s body that muscles attach to).
  • The first applications of this research will come some time “in the next decade or so,” and will be aimed at direct sensing of cells in a lab, researchers say
  • But further out they could be implanted directly in living organisms to monitor or control bodily processes.
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