Parylene for use in Bio-Medical implantable devices

Whenever implantable devices come into contact with the human body, long term protection against body fluids, enzymes, proteins, and lipids is vital.  Bio-medical surfaces typically require coating to protect from moisture, chemicals, and other potentially harmful substances.

 A downfall for wet chemistry, liquid coatings such as silicones, acrylics, epoxy, or urethanes is that they do not meet bio-compatibility requirements and cannot be applied with precise control.  On the contrary, parylene does not out-gas and is very effective against the passage of contaminants from both the body to substrate or substrate to body.

 Parylene can be applied a couple of mils thick to a few hundred angstroms in thickness, it is pin hole free, applied at room temperature, contains no additives, insoluble in most solvents, very lubricious, has a very high dielectric strength, and is biocompatible and bio-stable.

 Parylene C is currently being used is a number of well documented bio-medical implantable devices.  Parylene C has been proven to be a terrific biocompatible material.  It is USP Class VI implantable plastic material and conforms to material ISO-10993 Biological Evaluations for Medical Applications.  Parylene C is also probably the longest proven protective biocompatible material.   

 Sources:

 Parylene Technology for Neural Probes Applications.  Changlin Pang.  California Institute of Technology.  2008.

 

 S. Nancy, "Literature Review: Biological Safety of Parylene C," Medical Plastics

and Biomaterials, vol. 3, pp. 30-35, March 1996.

 

B. Humphrey, "Using Parylene for Medical Substrate Coating," Medical Plastics

and Biomaterials, Janurary 1996.