1 Implantable Bioelectronics – Editorial Introduction

The integration of electronic elements with biological systems, resulting in novel devices with unusual functionalities, attracts significant research efforts owing to fundamental scientific interest and the possible practical applications of such devices. The commonly used buzzword ‘‘bioelectronics’’ highlights the functional integration of two different areas of science and engineering – biology and electronics, to yield a novel subarea of biotechnology [1, 2]. Bioelectronics is a rapidly developing, multidisciplinary research direction, combining novel achievements from electronics miniaturization allowing devices to operate with ultralow power consumption [3], the development of flexible devices for interfacing with biological tissue via advances within materials science [4], bio-inspired unconventional computing for mimicking biological information processing [5], and many other highly innovative science and technology areas. One of the most advanced applications benefiting from the development of bioelectronics is the rapidly progressing area of biosensors technology [6]. The use of novel nanostructured materials integrated with biomolecular systems [7–9] tremendously contributes to the rapid progress of bioelectronics, especially in regard to biosensor applications [10]. The novel electronic systems based on flexible supports [11] for direct interfacing with biological tissues are very promising for use in implantable bioelectronic devices [12] (Figure 1.1). The most challenging developments in bioelectronics are related to biomedical applications, particularly advancing the direct coupling of electronic devices/machines with living organisms, where electronics operates in a biological environment implanted within a living body. This technology is already highly advanced, at least in some medical applications such as implantable cardiostimulators [13, 14] and various other implantable prosthetic devices [15, 16]. The most important issue in the biotechnological engineering of implantable devices is the interface between living tissues and artificial man-made implantable devices. Cardiac defibrillators/pacemakers, deep brain neurostimulators, spinal cord stimulators, gastric stimulators, foot drop implants, cochlear implants, insulin pumps, retinal implants, implantable neural electrodes, muscle implants, and other implantable devices must perform their functions by directly interacting with the respective organs to improve their natural operation