Silicone: Expanding the Horizon for Today’s Medical Devices

Silicone materials have been around for more than 70 years and since the 1960s have played an important and evolving part in products designed for the medical field. Since that time, silicone materials have been developed in various medical grades for skin contact, as well as short-term and long-term implantation. These materials can be formed into products using compression molding, transfer molding, and injection molding. This provides engineers, designers, and inventors with a high level of flexibility when selecting a molding process to produce their medical devices. Medical devices such as tubing for medical diagnostic systems to drug delivery devices like tear duct (punctual) plugs have been produced out of silicone.