Polymer Nanocomposite Materials with Enhanced Properties for Medical Tubing

描述(由申请人提供)：在许多医疗应用中，医疗器械所需的增强本质上是机械的。最先进的、高度工程化的医疗设备使医生能够非侵入性地执行以前只能通过手术才能完成的程序。推动手术越来越少侵入性的努力给医疗管材制造商带来了相当大的压力，要求它们减少用于制造导管和支架输送气球的医用管材的直径和壁厚。为了保持油管的物理和机械性能并避免破裂的风险，添加了填充物来增强制造油管的聚合物。传统的聚合物增强填充物，如玻璃、碳和其他纤维材料的颗粒尺寸太大，不适合用于最现代的微型医疗设备所需的薄壁。这项第一阶段的SBIR方案描述了一种粘土状无机材料/聚合物纳米复合材料的制备，用于制造薄壁、小直径的医疗管材。聚合物纳米复合材料非常适合这种应用，只需要几个百分点(2-5wt.%)的层状材料就能显著增强聚合物的性能。发展纳米复合材料的最大挑战是将无机层状材料广泛剥离到聚合物中，以获得具有连续性能的均质材料。大多数纳米薄膜只是插入到聚合物中，而不是剥离。建议的纳米材料非常适合于医学相关聚合物的剥离，并将产生大于700平方米/克的颗粒表面积--这一值大大超过了目前最先进的插层纳米膜的表面积。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In many medical applications, the enhancements required for medical devices are mechanical in nature. State-of-the-art, highly engineered medical devices allow physicians to perform procedures noninvasively that were previously possible only through surgery. The push to make procedures less and less invasive has put considerable pressure on medical tubing manufacturers to reduce the diameter and wall thickness of medical tubing used to make catheters and stint delivery balloons. To maintain the physical and mechanical properties of the tubing and avoid the risk of rupture, fillers are added to reinforce the polymer from which the tubing is made. The particle size of traditional polymer-reinforcing fillers such as glass, carbon and other fibrous materials are far too large to be suitable for thin walls required for the most modern of miniature medical devices. This Phase I SBIR proposal describes the preparation of a clay-like inorganic material/ polymer nanocomposite to be used in the manufacture of thin-wall, small diameter medical tubing. Polymer nanocomposites are ideally suited for this application and only a few percent (2 to 5 wt. %) of the layered material is needed to considerably reinforce the properties of the polymer. The biggest challenge in the development of the nanocomposite materials is the extensive exfoliation of the inorganic layered material into the polymer to obtain a homogenous material with continuous properties. Most nanofillers are simply intercalated into the polymer, not exfoliated. The proposed nanomaterials are ideally suited for exfoliation within medically relevant polymers and will yield particle surface areas greater then 700 m2/g - a value which greatly exceeds the surface area of current state-of-the-art, intercalated nanofillers.