Materials for Bioelectronic and Biomedical Applications

International customers, contact your local Sigma-Aldrich office (sigma-aldrich.com/worldwide-offices). and SUPELCO are trademarks of Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC, registered in the US and other countries. FLUKA is a trademark of Sigma-Aldrich GmbH, registered in the US and other countries. Material Matters is a trademark of Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC. Sigma brand products are sold through Sigma-Aldrich, Inc. Purchaser must determine the suitability of the product(s) for their particular use. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Please see product information on the Sigma-Aldrich website at www.sigmaaldrich.com and/or on the reverse side of the invoice or packing slip. Introduction Welcome to the first issue of Material Matters™ for 2013 focusing on biological and medical applications of electronic and nanomaterials. Bioelectronics interfaces electronics and biology with research efforts that cross disciplines such as chemistry, biology, physics, electrical engineering, and materials science. Organic electronic and carbon nanomaterials are highly desirable for application in bioelectronics research due to their biocompatible and flexible nature. Applications include wearable electronics (e.g. sensors and actuators) and more recently implantable electronics. It is reasonable to believe that these human-friendly electronic materials will play even more important roles in our daily life, from safety, disease diagnostics, and even life-sustaining technologies. In our first article Professor George Malliaras and Professor Róisín Owens (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines, France) and their collaborators provide two examples of innovative organic bioelectronic devices: electrocorticography arrays and organic electrochemical transistors comprised of conducting polymers. Owing to the intrinsic conductivity and the conformability of polymeric molecules, both devices can be used to record subtle signals inside living cells, such as human brain and cancer cells, with enhanced diagnostic capabilities. In the second article, Professor Tsuyoshi Sekitani and Professor Takao Someya (University of Tokyo, Japan) describe the development of heat-resistant, flexible, organic thin-film transistors (TFTs) utilizing DNTT. Remarkably, the DNTT-based TFT demonstrates tolerance to harsh medical sterilization conditions, without reducing its high mobility performance. Moreover, these TFTs remain flexible enabling the design of foldable transistors for medical catheter that measures spatial distribution of pressure. Professor Sang-Yong Ju (Yonsei University, Korea) in our third article reviews recent methodological advances in purifying carbon nanotubes (CNTs) according to their physical properties. Cutting-edge biological applications such as bioimaging, drug/gene delivery, and cancer therapy using these well sorted CNTs with defined structure, electronic type, chirality, length and handedness are also described. It is anticipated that CNTs will find extensive utility in bioelectronics devices and other biomedical applications. …