Implantable silk metamaterials could advance biomedicine, biosensing

Researchers have fabricated and characterized the first large-area metamaterial structures patterned on implantable, bio-compatible silk substrates. The antenna-like devices can monitor the "fingerprints" of chemical and biological agents and might be implanted to signal changes in the body. Metamaterials are artificial electromagnetic composites whose structures respond to electromagnetic waves in ways that atoms in natural materials do not.