A stent is a thin mesh tube used to support narrow or weak arteries. Stents are used in cases where a patient’s health is at risk because weak or blocked arteries are preventing blood flowing from the heart to other areas of the body.
Drug-eluting stents are a novel approach in stent technology. The technology involves stents that are coated with a biodegradable and biocompatible coating that slowly and continuously releases medicine at the artery to inhibit initial thickening and to prevent the artery from blocking again.
The adhesion of these novel coatings to the stent substrate is extremely important but not easy to test due to the extremely small size of the stents and the different shapes involved. To accurately and reliably test the coatings a tool with precise control over XY coordinates and load is required.
In this application note the Nanovea Mechanical Tester is used in Nano Scratch Mode to analyse the cohesive and adhesive strength of a coating on a metal stent mesh sample. This application note is an excellent demonstration of how the Nanovea tool is able to provide accurate and repeatable measurements on a sample the size of a human hair.
