Porous silicon and its applications in biology and medicine

Abstract

Development of safe container materials for targeted and controlled drug delivery to the right site in the body is one of the most important aspects of modern biotechnologies. In the last decade, a significant progress has been achieved in the study of nanostructured drug carriers, but the use of many nanomaterials is fraught with the enormous risk because of their high toxicity. The real breakthrough became the use of porous silicon, which has such important properties as biocompatibility, bioavailability, and biodegradability, which makes it possible to use it for solving a wide range of biological and medical problems in the field of diagnosis and treatment of diseases, implantology, and biomolecular screening.