Medical Tantalum Wire: Implant Metal - Excellent Medical Metal Material

In 400-300 B.C., the Phoenicians used metal wires to restore missing teeth; in China, during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.), there are records of silver paste fillings, which consisted of silver, mercury and tin, very similar to the modern silver amalgam. The first metal materials widely used in clinical treatment were precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum with good chemical stability and processing properties, but mainly for repair, until the early 20th century, the development of metal materials in biomedical devices became more extensive...

Medical tantalum - excellent medical metal material

Overview:

Modulus of elasticity 186-191 GPa, tensile strength 200-300MPa. Microhardness 120D - 30170MPa; it has good biocompatibility and resistance to physiological corrosion.

Advantages:

Tantalum implanted in bone can form an osseous bond with the surrounding new bone. Since 1940, when pure tantalum was first used in the field of orthopedics, it has been used in clinical practice for nearly 80 years. When tantalum is implanted in soft tissues, muscles and other tissues can grow normally on the button, without irritation or toxic side effects in human body. It is used as bone plates, cranial plates, bone screws, dental implants, facial prostheses, denture and surgical sutures and stitches.
Tantalum's unique surface negativity makes it exceptionally resistant to thrombosis and is used as an intravascular stent and in the human heart.

Applications:

1. Tantalum wire
Tantalum has good ductility and can be made into fine wires comparable to or even finer than a hair. Tantalum wire as a surgical suture has the advantages of easy sterilization, less irritation, and high resistance to tension, but also has the disadvantage of not being easily tied.
Tantalum wire can be used for suturing bone, tendons, fascia, as well as for tension-reducing sutures or for fixing teeth in the mouth, and can be used as sutures for visceral surgery or embedded in artificial eyeballs. Tantalum wires can even replace tendons and nerve fibers.

2. Tantalum sheets

Tantalum metal can be made into various shapes and sizes of tantalum sheets, which can be implanted according to the needs of various parts of the body, such as repairing and closing cracks and defects in broken skulls and fractures of limbs. After the artificial ear is made from tantalum sheets and fixed on the head, the skin is then transplanted from the leg.

3. Tantalum stent

Tantalum wire can be woven into a mesh balloon-expandable stent. The tantalum stent is clearly visible under X-ray and is very easy to monitor and follow up.
Its long-term retention in the body without fracture and corrosion.
The flexibility of tantalum is good, so the tantalum wire stent can better adapt to the normal pulsation of the artery and can be released quickly and accurately.

4. Tantalum coating

People take advantage of the excellent corrosion resistance of tantalum metal and coat it on the surface of certain medical metal materials to stop the release of toxic elements and improve the biocompatibility of metal materials, while tantalum coating also improves the visibility of the material in the human body.
Tantalum coatings improve the osseointegration properties of titanium metals, enhance cell adhesion and promote cell growth.
The higher surface energy and better wettability of the tantalum coating improve the interaction between the cells and the implant material.
In addition to metallic materials, tantalum can also be coated on the surface of non-metallic materials, such as carbon cages for spinal fusion, where the tantalum coating improves the strength and toughness of the carbon cage to suit the load-bearing capacity of the column and to better meet the requirements of the surgical procedure.

In addition, tantalum can also be coated with certain polymers in composites to improve the visibility and biocompatibility of the material.