The development of implantable medical electronic devices in the human body is hampered by the lack of suitable materials to use. Most semiconducting materials are stiff and brittle while the human tissue is soft and pliable and because of these incompatible properties, test results are unstable and unreliable.

However, scientist s at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) appears to have taken a leap in implementable electronic research. They studied a very thin nanotube-based material and measured how it responds electrically and optically to extreme strains. According to them, the material continues to conduct electricity of more than 700% and which is stretched seven times from its starting dimensions.

The use of nanotubes is the solution to the problems that faced the development of medical implementable materials because they have high length-to-width ratios, meaning they can bridge the cracked regions to maintain conductivity.

The UCLA team first put the nanotubes into a highly elastic substrate so the films could be properly stretched. They performed the stretching slowly, straining the material both uniformly and non-uniformly. They applied a voltage across the film as it was stretched and measure the changing electrical response.

The randomly distributed nanotube carbons have been studied for a variety of electronics applications. Of which they have displayed a variety of useful properties such as high flexibility, which is a key for developing implantable medical electronic devices. Recent studies also concluded that nanotube carbons are not toxic. So they are safe to implant in human tissue without the adverse effect of poison, infection or complications.

Implantable medical electronic devices will be used to monitor a variety of bodily functions including body temperature, blood pressure, fluid flow and many others. They can also be used to sense chemical, electrical and magnetic properties within the human body without running various tests.

These recent development certainly holds a great promise in the Medical field.