Epoxy-Based Composite Materials for Innovative Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Epoxies are a versatile class of resins, well-known for its excellent combination of properties like light weight, chemical resistance, fatigue strength, custom-made impact resistance, and can be tailored to be biocompatible. Although ceramic and metallic composites are widely accepted for the development of biomaterials, their heaviness, non-resorbability, and necessity of second surgical operation to remove the implant after healing induces extra pain for the patients; hence, they were gradually replaced by polymer composites. Epoxies can be self-cross-linked or cross-linked with external curatives at stoichiometric ratio to achieve desired properties and purity. Advances in epoxy-based biomedical composites have been focused on the design of implants with concerns on comfort, biocompatibility, precise property matching, light weight, and closely mimicking natural structures in performance. Epoxy-based materials are also having footprints in drug delivery and tissue engineering. The chapter highlights epoxy usage in the biomedical field for various advanced applications.