Glass made from amino acids could be used for optical devices implanted in the body that dissolve away after use.
Many glass materials use compounds that aren鈥檛 easily recyclable and can be toxic for the environment, which also rules out their use in the human body.
Now, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues have developed glass made from chains of organic compounds called amino acids that aren鈥檛 harmful and dissolve in the body after use.
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To make the glass, Yan and his team first chemically modified amino acids using chemicals so that they would melt when heated instead of breaking down. Next, they melted the amino acids to form liquid. The researchers then quickly cooled the liquid to create glass. They managed to make several types of glass by altering the chemicals used to modify the amino acids.
When the researchers poured the liquid glass into moulds or a 3D printer, they could produce components in specific shapes, such as fluorescent seashells.
The types of glass let through around 90 per cent of light, which is around 10 per cent more than the glass used in light bulbs, says Yan.
Tests of how well the glass breaks down when exposed to simulated gastric and intestinal fluids, as well as in soil, revealed that one of the types decomposed in around a week, while another took several months.
The researchers also implanted beads of the separate types of glass into mice and found that the fastest-degrading one dissolved completely in 12 days 鈥� although the mice did show signs of muscle degradation around the bead, which later healed.
Biologically recyclable glass is an interesting innovation, but 鈥渋t would be interesting to see the mechanical or barrier properties of the glass to see if these new glasses could potentially be used in place of conventional glasses鈥�, says at Imperial College London.
Yan says the glass could be used to make biodegradable optical fibres or degradable optical devices like periscopes for use in the body.
The process is a long way from full-scale production, he says, but the ingredients themselves are cheap and widely available.
Science Advances
