Biological Applications

The biological applications with MeV ions cover both the Ion Beam Analysis of biological tissue and Ion Beam Modification of Materials in order to manufacture, for example, biochips, cell substrates or micro-fluidic channels.

Generally, a focused ion beam is used to determine the elemental distribution in the tissue using, simultaneously, PIXE and RBS, whereas the density distribution is obtained by STIM. All these techniques are available at the CMAM internal microbeam line and they have been used to analyse different biological tissues, such as, arteries, skin samples or plant tissues.

In addition, MeV ion beams are ideally suited for producing topographic features and dimensionally accurate high aspect ratio 3D structures because of their deep penetration and straight trajectories into materials and consequently, they are a powerful tool to fabricate biomaterials.

The cell interactions with materials are strongly conditioned by the topography of the culture substrate. This is especially useful for prosthetic or organ implantation, or for the design of in-vitro therapeutic strategies.

The CMAM group is manufacturing micro&nano topographic patterns on different materials such TiAlV alloys or silicon surfaces by sequential ion implantation-chemical etching processes to control the topographic adhesion and orientation of different cell types.