Introduction: Properties of Materials—the Palette of the Biomaterials Engineer

This chapter provides a glimpse of the content in Part 1 of this book. In an analogy to the palette used by artists, it highlights the expansion of the biomaterials at our disposal from traditional materials such as metals, ceramics, polymers, composites, to materials of biological and living characteristics, and the evolving methods for characterizing these materials and their interactions with human body for the design and creation of medical treatments.