11. Conclusions

Silicon Carbide is a wide-band-gap semiconductor biocompatible material that has the potential to improve biomedical applications. SiC devices offer higher power densities and lower energy losses, enabling lighter, more compact and more efficient products for biocompatible and long-term in vivo applications such as sensors. The main problem facing the medical community today is the lack of biocompatible materials that are also capable of electronic operation. Silicon carbide has gained favor in the biomedical microdevice community for its potential as a structural and packaging material. Currently, bioMEMS devices that utilize SiC are relatively simple in design. Continued development of processing techniques that make SiC compatible with polymeric and other temperature-sensitive substrates is critical if SiC is to play a significant role in next-generation implantable biomedical microdevices. Therefore, SiC will have matured to the point where it can take its place with Si and its derivatives (SiO2 and SigN4) in the toolbox of commonly used MEMS and NEMS materials. In the near future it is expected that the semiconductor structures will have a profound effect on the capabilities of BioMEMS. Not only will the quantum dots and quantum planar structures be a major player in this area, but it is also expected that nanoporous and especially nanorods and nanocolumn arrays will provide new directions for the development of chemical sensors and biosensors capable of tackling the modern challenges of direct chemical analysis.
