An Implantable Antenna

[Heaven soon]

An Implantable Antenna
According to Fiorenzo Omenetto, professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts University, silk is a natural platform for medical implants--it's biocompatible, and while it's delicate and pliable, it's also tougher than Kevlar. Implanted in the body, silk can conform to any tissue surface, and, unlike conventional polymer-based implants, it could stay in place over a long period of time without adverse effects. Omenetto has previously taken advantage of these properties to mold silk into tiny chips and flexible meshes, pairing the material with transistors to track molecules, and with electrodes to monitor brain activity. Now Omenetto is exploring the combination of silk and metamaterials--metals like gold, copper, and silver manipulated at the micro- and nanoscale to exhibit electromagnetic characteristics not normally found in nature. For example, scientists have created metamaterials that act as "invisibility cloaks" by manipulating metals to bend light all the way around an object, rendering it invisible. Omenetto and his colleague Richard Averitt, associate professor of physics at Boston University, used similar principles to create a metamaterial that's responsive not to visible light, but rather to frequencies further down the electromagnetic spectrum, within the terahertz range. Not coincidentally, proteins, enzymes, and chemicals in the body are naturally resonant at terahertz frequencies, and, according to Averitt, each biological agent has its own terahertz "signature."

--
============
www.heavensoon.com
www.rapturetoheaven.com