Medical & healthcare
The one field where the material has to be safe in or on the body before anything else. Biocompatibility and sterilisation are gates a polymer must pass before its strength or stiffness even enters the conversation — and some are designed to dissolve on purpose.
On the numbers: every material named links to its cited entry. This page is the map of what those gates are and what passes them.
Three gates decide whether a polymer can be used at all — long before you size the part.
Biocompatibility
The material must not harm the body it touches — assessed to ISO 10993 (cytotoxicity, sensitisation, and more). It is judged as a finished part, since additives and leachables matter as much as the base polymer.
Sterilisability
It has to survive being sterilised — often repeatedly — by the chosen method: steam, radiation or gas. That single requirement rules many otherwise-fine polymers in or out.
Purity & traceability
Medical-grade resins use controlled, documented formulations with lot traceability and no migrating plasticisers where they would reach the patient.
Medical polymers span a spectrum — used once and thrown away, sterilised hundreds of times, or left inside the body for years.
Single-use & disposables
Mass-produced, sterilised once in the pack, then discarded. Clarity, cost and mouldability lead; they never see repeated sterilisation.
e.g. Syringes, IV sets and tubing, blood bags, petri dishes, pipettes
Reusable devices & instruments
Handled outside the body but sterilised again and again — so the driver is surviving hundreds of autoclave cycles without crazing, clouding or losing strength.
e.g. Instrument handles, sterilisation trays, endoscope parts, housings
Implants
Inside the body — the highest bar. Permanent implants must last for years; bioresorbable ones are designed to carry load, then dissolve as tissue heals and take it over.
e.g. Spinal cages, joint bearings, vascular grafts, bone cement, resorbable sutures & screws
The sterilisation method often decides the material more than the function does. Compatibility is method- and grade-dependent — these are the broad rules.
| Method | How it works | What it suits (and doesn't) |
|---|---|---|
| Steam autoclave | Moist heat at 121–134 °C under pressure. Cheap, fast, no residue — the default for reusables. | High-temperature polymers (PP, PC, PEEK, PEI) and metals. Not low-Tg materials (PVC, PLA, PMMA), which distort. |
| Gamma / E-beam | Penetrating ionising radiation, no heat — sterilises sealed packages in bulk. | Great for pre-packed disposables. But radiation can embrittle PP or yellow PC and PMMA — dose and grade matter. |
| Ethylene oxide (EtO) | A toxic gas at low temperature (~40–60 °C) for heat- and radiation-sensitive items. | Broadly compatible, including electronics and resorbables — but needs long aeration to purge residual EtO. |
| H₂O₂ plasma (VHP) | Vaporised hydrogen peroxide at low temperature — quick, no toxic residue. | Sensitive reusable devices. Not for cellulose, liquids or long narrow lumens. |
An implant designed to disappear
A bioresorbable polymer — such as PLA or its copolymers — is engineered to carry load while a bone or vessel heals, then hydrolyse harmlessly and hand the load back to living tissue. No second surgery to remove it. The design target is not just strength: it is a strength-versus-time curve that fades in step with healing — too fast and it fails early, too slow and it lingers. That is materials engineering against biology, and exactly the kind of provenance-first data mpolyco exists to get right.
Part of the Make map. Browse the cited materials database, or see the other branches — aerospace, automotive and 3D printing.