Reducing medical waste through biodegradable technologies

Millions of discarded electronics are generated annually. In 2022 alone the amount of waste said to be generated was around 62 million metric tons. Electronics contain so many harmful substances within them such as lead, mercury, and cadmium. All of these harmful substances pose a major risk to environmental health, since only a small percentage of discarded electronics are recycled worldwide.. The most vulnerable to all these toxins released by electronic waste are pregnant women and children. The International Labour Organization estimated that as of 2020, 16.5 million children were working in the industrial sector, electronic waste being a subsection of that sector(WHO). Biodegradable electronics are devices that offer us a way in which we can minimize these problems that come with the mountains of electronic waste being produced annually. They can replace a number of devices, where those devices can be made to dissolve after the period of their functionality is over.

Contents

Materials used in biodegradable tech Application in medicine How it works Challenges that may arise Conclusion Bibliography

Biodegradable electronics are devices that are made up of materials that can and will dissolve after their use is done. The devices are made to be biocompatible and harmless to the body, so that even when it dissolves it leaves no indication and residue. These devices make it so that once the device is implanted into the body, it will perform its function for its appointed time then it will completely dissolve. Meaning there would be no need for a second surgery to retrieve the parts. The devices allow us to have real time monitoring of vital signs, biochemical markers, and wirelessly transmitting data that allows us to personalize medicine to the patients within a timely fashion. In this article I will be delving further into the sorts of materials that are used to make these biodegradable devices, how they can be used for the medical field, and challenges that may arise from these relatively new biomedical and engineering-based developments.

Materials used in biodegradable tech

There are a variety of different materials, organic, inorganic, synthetic, structural and functional that can be used for the making of these biodegradable sensors and technologies. Some of them include:

Natural polymers; These allow for a lot of flexibility in terms of changing the chemical structure, morphology, and dissociation time scale of the material. The changes to the materials can be made by altering the molecular weight, crystal structure, chemical composition, hydrophilic nature, hydrophobic nature, and erosion mechanisms amongst other things. Naturally derived polymers such as collagen, chitosan, fibrin, silk, gelatin, alginate, cellulose, dextran, and starch have all been used a lot throughout the years for the making and formulation of these biodegradable technologies. The immense malleability of their fundamental properties makes them wonderful candidates for the production of biodegradable devices.

Synthetic polymers; These are polymers that are made synthetically making them easier to reproduce and control. This makes them even more flexible physiochemically than the natural polymers. Many studies testing the biocompatibility of synthetic polymers have shown how effective they are for the production of the biodegradable devices. One instance is polylactic acid(PLA) and poly-co-glycolic acid/polylactide-co-glycolide(PLGA) microspheres that were implanted in rats to test their biocompatibility. Polyglycerol sebacate(PGS) membranes is another synthetic polymer that was found to be biocompatible in both human cardiac mesenchymal stem cells and rat cardiac progenitor cells in supporting their growth.(Hosseini, E. S., Dervin, S., Ganguly, P., & Dahiya, R.)

Monocrystalline inorganic semiconductors; These are chemically inert and biocompatible materials that are highly considered when making biodegradable devices. Semiconductor technologies are already well established making them great to operate on candidates for the new and improved manufacturing of biodegradable devices. The semiconductors also offer us nanoscale thickness and undergo hydrolysis in biofluids.
Dielectric materials; These are electric insulators that generate large polarization in the presence of an electric field. This means that positive charges present in the dielectric material move towards the applied field and negative charges move away from the applied field. It then produces the outcome of an internal electric field that decreases the total field that is contained by the dielectric. There are different kinds of dielectric materials that can be used for biodegradable technology. Some of them include, “inorganic dielectrics” like magnesium oxide. This has multiple functionalities such as optical transparency, thermal stability, high resistivity, and encapsulating layers that shield other functional materials. Another dielectric is synthetic polymer dielectrics such as PLA, they are widely available and easy to process. This makes them perfect candidates for the making of biodegradable devices.

Application in medicine

In medicine the technology is implanted into the body to perform its function then it safely dissolves away. An example of the biodegradable devices in the medical application is, temporary cardiac pacemakers that regulate heart rhythm for a time in recovery. There are also nerve regeneration scaffolds that are used to guide tissue growth. Postsurgical monitors are used to track the pressure and temperature in surgical wounds. We also have drug delivery devices, with its primary function being to release medication at a targeted location at specific times. All of these are devices that are implanted or released in the body to perform their function, then they safely dissolve without leaving any residue or causing harm to the system.

How it works

Though the process in which the biodegradable materials degrade is slightly different for different devices because they use different materials to make each, the most common way is through hydrolysis. Hydrolysis is when a chemical reaction occurs with the presence of water. The hydrolysis of these devices allows polymers to be broken down into smaller molecules and for metals to convert into absorbable ions. Even the rate of degradation of these devices is monitored and altered through the type of material used in the devices,the polymer chemistry, and the encapsulating layer thickness. An example of this is a silicon nanomembrane, this device dissolves at around 5 nanometers per day in phosphate-buffered saline at body temperature. Another one is synthetic biodegradable polymers like PLA that contain ester bonds which make it more likely for them to go through hydrolysis.

Challenges that may arise

The rate at which the bioreabsorbable devices take to degrade into the body and how long the device functions before it starts breaking down are some important things that we need to consider when using these devices. Even though we’ve come a long way from when biodegradable devices were first introduced, there is still a long way yet to go. There are certain environments within the body, that when these devices are placed inside, they won’t be able to survive. Things such as the chemicals within the body, biofluids that may penetrate into the device and end its functionality, and the speed and intensity at which fluids and materials move inside the body can greatly affect their lifespan.. These are just a few things that many of these devices have not been able to overcome or only barely.

Power supplies that come from batteries, energy harvesters, or flexible degradable circuits for wireless energy transfer are very essential to achieving a fully active electrical system in these bioreabsorbable devices. These devices that have been previously made did not require a lot of energy supply, but that just meant that they were low in functionality. Ones that did require a lot of power supply on the other hand mostly turned out incompatible for the function it was created for. Sometimes it would turn out too big and sometimes it would not be completely degradable. These are all limitations that we need to tackle in order to make these devices completely functional, of proper size, and adequately biodegradable.

The biodegradable devices are monitored and data is being communicated between the devices by connecting a thin wire to an external circuit and power supply. and power supply. It is necessary to continuously monitor these devices that are being implanted into the body. Biomarkers within the body that are also being monitored regularly cause a lot of data to be generated, which then requires more complex circuit systems in these biodegradable devices. The thin wires that run from inside of the body to the external power supply could pose a risk for contraction of some sort of infection. They are not the most suitable way to go about supplying power to the implanted devices. Then there are wireless data communicators within the devices that are nondegradable. After the device completes its function it will degrade and leave the wireless data communicators, which would then need surgery to be removed from the body.

These are just a few of the bigger challenges that we still need to tackle before biodegradable devices become fully functioning and efficient enough for us to start replacing our current nonbiodegradable devices with them.

Conclusion

If we continue to improve and evolve these biodegradable devices, we as humanity will benefit greatly from it. We will be better able to predict ailments and prevent diseases.. This could help in neutralizing or avoiding bigger disease outbreaks. Even personalizing medicine for many groups of individuals or multiple sorts of illnesses can become possible and more accessible. Once we master refining the strengths of all the materials that are suitable for the making of the devices, we have then taken another step forward in improving our healthcare systems and efforts. Truly understanding the biological systems and immune response to these devices is what will help us to further improve our designs and models. This will help it better serve its purpose in the most efficient manner possible.

These bioreabsorbable devices will not only improve the health of the whole population, but it will also greatly reduce our carbon footprint and in turn massively help the environment to heal. The healing of the environment is also another fundamental way in which our overall health can be improved. It is as the saying goes “A healthy planet and healthy people are two sides of the same coin”.