Materials/​Biomaterials

The safe use of silver ions in antibacterial textiles has been a matter of debate worldwide, with consumers increasingly seeking a proven alternative. Sweden’s national agency for chemical inspection has ruled silver a health risk, citing possible damage to human genetic material,...

A team of engineers at Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, has developed an innovative method of using off-the-shelf 3D printers and materials to fabricate custom medical implants that can contain antibacterial and chemotherapeutic compounds for targeted drug delivery.

Defects in the head, face, or jaw, whether from disease, injury, or birth defect, can dramatically impact a person’s appearance. A team of researchers at Texas A&M University, College Station, report that they have developed a specialized material that can expand with warm salt water to...

When seeking chemical compounds with just the right properties to create new products, including medical devices, researchers can spend years of trial and error testing them in the lab. To aid researchers in this quest, a team of scientists at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at...

The strength of barnacle cement is unbeaten when compared to anything man-made, say researchers at Newcastle University, UK. It can stick to any surface, under any conditions. But exactly how it works has been a mystery. The international team of scientists have shown for the first time that barnacle...

A new phase-changing material built from wax and foam that’s capable of switching between hard and soft states could allow surgical robots to shape-shift and move through the body to reach a particular point without damaging any of the organs or vessels along the way, say engineers...

A research team at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin has created a new nonlinear metasurface, or meta mirror, that may help advance the miniaturization of laser systems for biomedical research and other applications.

A collaboration between researchers at Penn State University, and Shinshu University in Japan say that they have developed a simple, scalable method of making graphene oxide (GO) fibers that are strong, stretchable, and can be easily crolled into yarn with strengths approximating that of Kevlar.

A team of researchers from Rice University, Houston, TX, and The Methodist Hospital Research Institute say that submicroscopic particles containing even smaller particles of iron oxide could make magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) a far more powerful tool to detect and fight disease. They created composite...

The natural mechanical properties of natural joints are considered unrivalled. Cartilage is coated with a special layer of lubrication that allows joints to move virtually friction-free, even under high pressure. Using simulations on supercomputers, scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany...

Inspired by earthworms, which use peristaltic locomotion to wriggle, an engineering student at the University of Cincinnati's College of Engineering and Applied Science used a worm’s contracting and expanding motion to provide a way for gels to freely swim in liquids.

The NIH’s Bionic Man site helps viewers visually explore some of the latest bioengineering creations from research funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. From prosthetics to artificial kidneys, these technologies are changing lives now and in the future.