Meltaway electronics

Biocompatible electronic devices that dissolve harmlessly into their surroundings after functioning for a precise amount of time have been created by a team of biomedical engineers at Tufts University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. These transient electronic devices are very thin conventional circuits encapsulated in silk proteins, extracted from silkworm cocoons. Aimed at producing a generation of medical implants that would never need surgical removal the researchers have demonstrated the new platform by testing on rats a thermal device designed to monitor and prevent post-surgical infection.