Polymers that exhibit shape-memory effect (SME) are an important class of materials in medicine, especially for minimally invasive deployment of devices. Professor Subbu Venkatraman and his group from ...

Next-generation vascular stents can make cardiovascular therapies minimally invasive and vascular treatments safe and less ...

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing unique polymers, which change shape upon heating, to open blocked arteries, probe neurons in the brain and engineer a tougher spine.

The technique of keyhole surgery minimises scarring, speeds healing and reduces the risk of infection. However, it is extremely difficult to carry out delicate surgical procedures accurately in a ...

Researcher Ken Gall uses this thermomechanical test frame to determine the maximum possible shape change of his team's shape-memory polymer. Shape-memory alloys and polymers are the contortionists of ...

MedShape (Atlanta, GA) has been granted a U.S. patent for a shape memory polymer-based technology used in orthopedic applications. Shape memory polymers can "remember" more than one shape and ...

While shape-memory materials do have some interesting potential applications, many of them require the application of heat in order to change shape – and that could cause problems, in ...

In a recent review published in Micromachines, researchers from Spain and Portugal highlighted the synergistic combination of shape-memory polymers (SMP) with carbon nanotubes (CNT) to enhance ...

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) provide new insights in biomedical engineering with the unique properties they exhibit, in applications such as cardiovascular stents, guide wires and organ frame retractors ...