New publication in Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials
29 November, 2024
The BCD research group has recently published a new publication in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials.
By Nafiseh Mollae
Imagine a tiny piece of metal inside your body, designed to support healing, and then safely dissolve without a trace. That’s the promise of biodegradable zinc alloys for medical implants like stents, which help keep blood vessels open. But have you ever wondered what happens inside these metals when they are deformed, like when a stent expands inside a blood vessel?
For the stent to work properly, it must expand without breaking. That’s a challenge: when zinc is deformed, it must find a way to handle the applied forces. If it can’t, the material may crack and fail. This is where the story gets interesting. Zinc has a special mechanism to accommodate deformation: it can form something called deformation twins inside its structure, as you can see in the image.
So, what exactly is twinning? No, not twins like babies! These “twins” are tiny, mirror-like regions that develop within the metal’s grains.
M.Sc. Materials Science and Engineering
Ph.D. student in the BCD Group at IMDEA Materials. Her expertise is in materials characterisation, mechanical behaviour, and deformation mechanisms of metals, focusing on optimising thermomechanical processes to develop biodegradable metals. She designs and optimises 3D-printed zinc-based scaffolds for cardiovascular stents.
Twinning happens when part of the metal’s crystal structure rotates in such a way that it forms a mirror image within the grain. This creates a twin boundary, a special zone where the atoms are arranged symmetrically but slightly shifted compared to the rest of the grain.
These twins help the metal deform more safely by allowing the grains to change shape more easily. The twin boundaries act like pathways for atoms to move, helping the material absorb the forces applied to it. This prevents cracks from forming and makes the metal more ductile.
By understanding how twinning works, scientists can design zinc stents that are stronger, safer, and more reliable inside the body. It’s a powerful example of how small changes in a material’s internal structure can have a big impact on the success of medical devices.
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The BCD research group has recently published a new publication in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials.
IMDEA Materials Institute has taken a significant step in its commitment to innovation and the scientific development of young researchers by launching its new Junior Principal Investigator (Junior PI) program.
The BCD research group has recently published a new publication in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials.
IMDEA Materials Institute has taken a significant step in its commitment to innovation and the scientific development of young researchers by launching its new Junior Principal Investigator (Junior PI) program.
Jesús Ordoño, Monsur Islam, Andrés Díaz Lantad, Mónica Echeverry-Rendón and De-Yi Wang, Biomaterials Science, 2025
Yu-Yao Liu, Mónica Echeverry-Rendón , Next Materials, 2025,100647
O. Contreras-Almengor, J. Ordoño, M. Li , E. Matykina, M. Avella, M. Echeverry-Rendón, A. Diaz-Lantada, J.M. Molina-Aldareguia, Biomaterials Advances, 214281, 2025
