[Dan McCann]

Purdue University researchers are using lasers to develop technologies to improve the compatibility, longevity and manufacture of hip implants, according to the Purdue University News.

One of the Purdue projects centers on depositing layers of a ceramic and metal powder to make the implants. Researchers use a laser to melt subsequent layers of the powdered materials, which are then solidified to form parts of the artificial hip. The laser depostion technique is especially effective for coating titanium implants with ceramic, which is compatible with bone, said Yung Shin, Ph.D., professor of mechanical engineering and director of Purdue's Center for Laser-Based Manufacturing.


Purdue mechanical engineering doctoral
student Shaoyi Wen, at left, and technician
Andrew Hecht review data using a laser
deposition system.

"Titanium and other metals do not match either the stiffness or the nature of bones, so you have to coat it with something that does," Shin said. "However, if you deposit ceramic on metal, you don't want there to be an abrupt change of materials because that causes differences in thermal expansion and chemical composition, which results in cracks. One way to correct this is to change the composition gradually so you don't have a sharp boundary."

Using laser deposition, researchers also can customize implants for patients. "Medical imaging scans could just be sent to the laboratory, where the laser deposition would create the part from images," Shin said. "Instead of taking 30 days like it does now because you have to make a mold first, we could do it in three days. You reduce both the cost and production time."

Shin added that tests showed the bond created between the deposited material and the underlying titanium, steel or chromium was at least seven times stronger than industry requirements.

Other research at the Center for Laser-Based Manufacturing includes using an ultrashort pulse laser to fabricate arterial stents.

To read the full report, visit: http://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2009b/09...nImplants.html

[marrydavidson10]

WASHINGTON – Modern era Scientists hope that laser-based processes may surely help to create arterial stints and longer-lasting medical implants Ten times faster, and less extravagantly.
Yung Shin, a professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of Purdue’s Center for Laser-Based Manufacturing, stresses the necessitate for new technologies to meet the huge worldwide market for artificial hips and knees, insisting that the international population of people younger than Forty who receive hip implants is expected to be 40 million once a year by 2010, and double to 80 million by 2030.