Mechanical Behaviour of a Polypyrrole Based Active Guidewire

Abstract

The medical field has suffered a great evolution during the last years and it can be reflected in the minimal invasive surgeries’ development. These kinds of surgeries are important because have reduced the mishaps during medical interventions using guidewires. To decrease the risk and to facilitate the surgeries, the implementation of conducting polymers in these guidewires can achieve the necessary bending to drive these tools through the desired path. This is achieved by attaching a conducting polymer, called Polypyrrole (PPy), in one side of the guidewire tip, and applying small voltages (<1V) getting the desired bending decreasing the medical intervention time. In this project, it has been developed a theoretical model to predict the bending of these kinds of tools knowing the force of the PPy can do. In order to obtain it, experiments varying the dimensions of these polymers have been carried out in an electrolyte solution called NaDBS with 2 types of guidewires (“ZIPwire Hydrophilic Guidewire” and “Amplatz SuperStiff guidewire” of Boston Scientific). These results are compared with the results previously obtained checking how they fit with the reality.