Materials & Manufacturing

A team of researchers at researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM in Bremen, Germany, have developed load bearing, biodegradable implants that are completely degradable in the body. As a first step, they have used powder injection molding to manufacture...

Individuals in industrial associations, educational institutions, and government organizations who are interested in composite materials made from constituent materials with different physical or chemical properties now have free, 24/7 access to simulation tools through an online community with...

A team of scientists at the University of Pittsburgh, along with collaborators at the University of Cincinnati, and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, are developing implantable medical devices made from biodegradable metals that can dissolve within a fixed time period,...

According to a recent report by the Freedonia Group, world demand for disposable medical supplies will increase 6.6 percent yearly to nearly $245 billion in 2018. The upgrading and enforcement of infection prevention standards, coupled with an expanding volume of hospital, surgical, and outpatient...

A team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD, has demonstrated a laser-based imaging system that creates high-definition 3D maps of surfaces from as far away as 10.5 meters. They say that this method may be useful in diverse fields, including...

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,...

New research has confirmed that a technique developed previously at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg, MD, can enable optical microscopes to measure the 3D shape of objects at nanometer-scale resolution—far below the normal resolution limit for optical...

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.