Flexible, Implantable LED Detects Cancer

A biocompatible, flexible gallium nitride (GaN) LED that can detect prostate cancer has been developed by professor Keon Jae Lee and his research team at KAIST (formerly the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology).

The highly efficient GaN LED has been commercialized in LED TVs and in the lighting industry, but because of its brittleness, this semiconductor material has been difficult to use to fabricate flexible electronic systems.

Professor Keon Jae Lee’s team has developed a new concept: a biocompatible, flexible gallium nitride LED that can detect prostate cancer. (Image: KAIST)

Lee has been working on this material since his PhD studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He co-invented a “high-performance flexible single-crystal GaN.” This new technology uses the same system to transfer thin films of GaN LED onto bendable surfaces, which is encapsulated in a biocompatible package.

Lee and his team demonstrated the system's potential application as an implantable biomedical sensing device that can detect prostate cancer.

“Biointegrated LEDs represent an exciting new technology with strong potential to address important challenges in human health,” said John Roger, professor in the department of materials science and engineering at UIUC.

This paper was published in an online issue of Nano Energy Elsevier Journal.

For more information, visit: www.kaist.edu/english