We constantly seek to max out the potential of our NiTi thin film technology, and to offer the novel opportunities, that this technology provides, to our customers. We therefore put great importance on continous R&D efforts.
This resulted in two publications, with Acquandas as main author in collaboration with the Institute of Materials Science at the University of Kiel, that will be published shortly.
The first publication, entitled „Fabrication of self-expandable NiTi thin film devices with micro-electrode array for bioelectric sensing, stimulation and ablation“, will appear in Biomedical Microdevices, a Springer Science+Business Media Journal. The presented work shows the technological capability of fabricating self-expandable medical devices, that additionally exhibit a multitude of independently addressable electrodes, distributed over the whole medical device, using thin film deposition techniques. These electrodes can be employed for the detection of bioelectrical signals, e.g. for recording of cortical activity. Other applications areas are stimulation or ablation of tissue.
The second publication addresses the issue of poor radiopacity of Nitinol, an issue that has been worked on for two decades and whose importance increases further with the ongoing trend of device miniaturization. The paper „Method for fabricating miniaturized NiTi self-expandable thin film devices with increased radiopacity“ (Shape Memory and Superelasticity, Springer) will describe a multi-layer approach: the NiTi thin film is covered at random locations with an additional Tantalum layer of arbitrary shape. Results show that this approach significantly increases radiopacity: whereas the pure NiTi layer of 35 µm thickness is not visible under X-ray, an identical layer with Ta markers is clearly detectable. The influence on the mechanical properties of the NiTi layer must however not be neglected, and can be optimized by a suitable geometry of the Ta layer.