Nitinol medical devices and implants

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.