Microwave Materials Characterization of Biodegradable Glass

Biodegradable glass is a special category of glass that is widely used in biomedical engineering for the repair and regeneration of soft and hard tissues and other rehabilitation purposes. This type of glass degrades when implanted inside the human body and gets absorbed by the body without producing any harmful effects. Hence, these types of glasses can be potentially used as a substrate for fabricating implantable and temporary biomedical sensors. However, in order to be able to design and simulate these sensors, it is critical that the dielectric properties of these biodegradable glass substrates are known. To this end, the dielectric properties of anhydrous sodium tetra borate biodegradable glass are characterized along with those of a commercial glass slide using the open-ended waveguide method. In addition, the fabricated biodegradable glass substrates and the commercial slide glass were tested for residual stress development and surface roughness, which plays an important role in determining the accuracy of the measured data.