Single-crystal Silicon Carbide: A Biocompatible and Hemocompatible Semiconductor for Advanced Biomedical Applications
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1246-B08-08
Single-crystal Silicon Carbide: A Biocompatible and Hemocompatible Semiconductor for Advanced Biomedical Applications S. E. Saddow 1), 2), 3), C. Coletti 1), 4), C. L. Frewin 1), 2), 3), N. Schettini 1), 3),5) A. Oliveros 1) and M. Jarosezski 3), 6) 1)
Electrical Engineering Department, USF, Tampa, FL, USA Dept. Of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology, USF, Tampa, FL, USA 3) Florida Center of Excellence for Biomolecular Identification and Targeted Therapeutics (FCoE-BITT), University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA 4) Max Planck Institute for Solid State Res., Heisenbergstr. 1, 70569 Stuttgart, DE 5) Dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia 6) Dept. of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, USF, Tampa, FL, USA 2)
Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract Crystalline silicon carbide (SiC) and silicon (Si) biocompatibility was evaluated in vitro by directly culturing three skin and connective tissue cell lines, two immortalized neural cell lines, and plateletrich plasma (PRP) on these semiconducting substrates. The experiments were performed specifically for the three adopted SiC polytypes, namely 3C-, 4H- and 6H-SiC, and the results were compared to those obtained for Si crystals. Cell proliferation and adhesion quality were studied using MTT [3-(4,5dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide] assays and fluorescent microscopy. For the neural cells studied atomic force microscopy (AFM) was also used to quantify the filopodia and lamellipodia extensions on the surface of the tested materials. Fluorescent microscopy was used to assess platelet adhesion to the semiconductor surfaces where significantly lower values of platelet adhesion to 3C-SiC was observed compared to Si. The reported results show that SiC is indeed a more biocompatible substrate than Si. While there were some differences among the degree of biocompatibility of the various SiC polytypes tested, SiC appears to be a highly biocompatible material in vitro that is also somewhat hemocompatible. This extremely intriguing result appears to put SiC into a unique class of materials that is both bio- and hemo-compatible and is, to the best of our knowledge, the only semiconductor with this property. Introduction Many biomedical devices require the need of materials that are biocompatible and can allow a sensing perspective. Biochemical sensors, biologically interfaced neural networks, and smart biomedical implants necessitate hard semiconductor materials so that sensing can be performed using either electronic or mechanical means (i.e., MEMS). To date, the biocompatibility of only a few crystalline semiconductors has been investigated, with Si and titanium dioxide (TiO2) drawing most of the attention [1-3]. However, Si has been shown to display different degrees of cytotoxicity, mostly due to its instability in aqueous solutions with subsequent formation of silica and silicates, which are known for their harmful effects on cells [3-5]. On the other hand, TiO2, which can be
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