Materials & Manufacturing

Implants used to monitor bodily functions or to provide drugs would advance personalized medicine, but there is an inherent problem—the human immune system recognizes the device as an invader and encapsulates it, preventing the device from working properly. To combat this problem, researchers at the...

Researchers at The Ohio State University, Columbus, say that their technology is closing in on creating low-cost electronic devices that work in contact with inside the body, and that their first planned use of the technology is a sensor that will detect the very early stages of organ transplant...

Doctors at Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, DC, are creating new hearts to help cardiac surgeons. Not actual hearts, but three-dimensional synthetic models using a 3D printer. The only one of its kind at a Washington area hospital, the printer uses scans from individual patients to replicate...

Combined with state-of-the-art micro-sculpting techniques, a new resin holds promise for making customized electrodes for fuel cells or batteries, as well as biosensor interfaces for medical uses. A rabbit sculpture, the size of a typical bacterium, was one of several shapes created by a team of Japanese...

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), also known as DuPont’s Teflon®, is renowned for keeping things from sticking, and is used as a dry lubricating polymer on machine components, from kitchen tools to space and biomedical applications. Recently, research engineers at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville,...

By modifying the underlying network of cellulose fibers, etching off surface “fluff” and applying a thin chemical coating, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, have created a new type of paper that repels a wide variety of liquids, including water and oil.

Scientists at the University of Washington, Seattle, have created a synthetic substance that can fully resist the body’s natural attack response to foreign objects. They say that devices such as artificial heart valves, prostheses and breast implants could be coated with this polymer to prevent the body...

Creating alloys at the nanometer scale is producing materials with properties unlike anything produced before says scientists at the University of Pittsburgh, who have demonstrated that these alloys possess the ability to emit such bright light they could have potential uses in medicine.

Does glass move over time? That’s the question tackled by a team of researchers at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, who say that glass remains in solid form, unless shattered, of course. The idea for this research came from a doctoral student's qualifying exam, said Gregory McKenna, a professor of chemical...

Once implanted, coronary artery stents to prop open blood vessels usually remain in place for the rest of the patient’s life. The longer a stent is in place, the greater the risk of late-stage side effects. That's why researchers are trying to develop a bioabsorbable stent, one that will gradually and...

Polymer scientists at Rice University, Houston, TX, discovered that the liquid crystal phase of silicone, which is partway between a solid and a liquid, becomes up to 90 percent stiffer when repeatedly compressed. Their research could lead to new strategies for self-healing materials or...