Nitinol medical devices and implants

Abstract

Superelastic Nitinol is now a common and well-known engineering material in the medical industry. While the greater flexibility of the alloy drives many of its applications, there are also a large number of lesser-known advantages of Nitinol in medical devices. This paper reviews 7 of these less-obvious but very important reasons for Nitinol's success, both past and future. Several new medical applications will be used to exemplify these points, including the quickly-growing and technologically-demanding stent applications. Stents are particularly interesting because they take advantage of the thermoelastic hysteresis of Nitinol.

Key Words:

• Nitinol
• shape memory
• superelasticity
• dynamic interference
• biased stiffness