ABSTRACT
Material-specific knowledge of physical properties as tensile strength, modulus, percent crystallinity, or glass transition temperature all serve to enhance the quality of the final product design or the feasibility of the manufacturing process that will be used to produce it. Their importance to the overall design of a product is related not only to the direct effect that the device will have on the biological environment in which it performs, but also to the fabrication of the device. Hydrophilicity is a property exploited extensively in relation to the performance of a given device. Wettability, often referred to as hydrophilicity is considered to be a surface property of a material, as opposed to true hydrophilicity, which is considered a bulk property. For the fabrication of medical devices that come into contact with blood and tissue, it is usually desirable to utilize materials that exhibit very high degrees of wettability.
