Remarks
Nitinol is an important alloy for use in medical devices, due to its exceptional biocompatibility, especially in the areas of corrosion resistance and thrombogenicity. Corrosion resistance is enhanced through methods that produce a uniform titanium dioxide layer on the surface with very few defects and impurities. Thrombogenicity is lowered on nitinol surfaces that contain nickel, so processes that retain nickel oxides in the surface layer are beneficial. The use of coatings has also been shown to greatly improve biocompatibility.
Because implanted devices contact the surface of the material, surface science plays an integral role in research aimed at enhancing biocompatibility, and in the development of new biomaterials. The development and improvement of nitinol as an implant material, from characterizing and improving the oxide layer to developing coatings, has been based largely on surface science.
Research is underway to produce better, more biocompatible, coatings. This research involves producing a coating that is very much like biologic material in order to further lessen the foreign body reaction. Biocomposite coatings containing cells or protein coatings are being explored for use with nitinol as well as many other biomaterials.
Read more about this topic: Nitinol Biocompatibility
Famous quotes containing the word remarks:
“I thought my razor was dull until I heard his speech and that reminds me of a story that’s so dirty I’m ashamed to think of it myself.”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, as a newly-appointed college president commenting on the remarks of Huxley College’s outgoing president (1932)
“So, too, if, to our surprise, we should meet one of these morons whose remarks are so conspicuous a part of the folklore of the world of the radio—remarks made without using either the tongue or the brain, spouted much like the spoutings of small whales—we should recognize him as below the level of nature but not as below the level of the imagination.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The general feeling was, and for a long time remained, that one had several children in order to keep just a few. As late as the seventeenth century . . . people could not allow themselves to become too attached to something that was regarded as a probable loss. This is the reason for certain remarks which shock our present-day sensibility, such as Montaigne’s observation, “I have lost two or three children in their infancy, not without regret, but without great sorrow.””
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)