Biocompatibility and Bioactivity of Porous Silicon

One of the most important features that define a quality biomaterial is its ability to be in contact with biological tissue without generating an unacceptable degree of harm at the insertion/implantation site (Williams 2008). Producing biocompatible implantable devices has been a major concern as they are required to remain for prolonged periods of time inside living tissues. Recent work in biomaterial development has focused on the generation of materials that can be fully resorbed or even tuned to degrade at a specified rate and be replaced by the surrounding tissue as it heals (Bitar and Zakhem 2014). These materials can even be tuned to promote the healing process by the addition of growth factors or other drugs (Chadwick et al. 2014). To address safety concerns, each individual biomaterial needs to be precisely evaluated both in vitro and in vivo before moving into clinical trials (Jones and Grainger 2009; Kohane and Langer 2010; Kunzmann et al. 2011; Jaganathan and Godin 2012).