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Foldable and Cytocompatible Sol-gel TiO Photonics

Scientific Reports, ISSN: 2045-2322, Vol: 5, Issue: 1, Page: 13832
2015
  • 47
    Citations
  • 0
    Usage
  • 50
    Captures
  • 0
    Mentions
  • 70
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Citations
    47
  • Captures
    50
  • Social Media
    70
    • Shares, Likes & Comments
      70
      • Facebook
        70

Article Description

Integrated photonics provides a miniaturized and potentially implantable platform to manipulate and enhance the interactions between light and biological molecules or tissues in in-vitro and in-vivo settings, and is thus being increasingly adopted in a wide cross-section of biomedical applications ranging from disease diagnosis to optogenetic neuromodulation. However, the mechanical rigidity of substrates traditionally used for photonic integration is fundamentally incompatible with soft biological tissues. Cytotoxicity of materials and chemicals used in photonic device processing imposes another constraint towards these biophotonic applications. Here we present thin film TiO as a viable material for biocompatible and flexible integrated photonics. Amorphous TiO films were deposited using a low temperature (<250 °C) sol-gel process fully compatible with monolithic integration on plastic substrates. High-index-contrast flexible optical waveguides and resonators were fabricated using the sol-gel TiO material, and resonator quality factors up to 20,000 were measured. Following a multi-neutral-axis mechanical design, these devices exhibit remarkable mechanical flexibility, and can sustain repeated folding without compromising their optical performance. Finally, we validated the low cytotoxicity of the sol-gel TiO devices through in-vitro cell culture tests. These results demonstrate the potential of sol-gel TiO as a promising material platform for novel biophotonic devices.

Bibliographic Details

Li, Lan; Zhang, Ping; Wang, Wei-Ming; Lin, Hongtao; Zerdoum, Aidan B; Geiger, Sarah J; Liu, Yangchen; Xiao, Nicholas; Zou, Yi; Ogbuu, Okechukwu; Du, Qingyang; Jia, Xinqiao; Li, Jingjing; Hu, Juejun

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Multidisciplinary

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