This book is written for students who want a working knowledge in the field of implant materials. Obviously, the interdisciplinary nature of this subject has been a major obstacle in writing a book of this nature. In writing this book, I have attempted to cover both biological and nonbiological (man-made) materials for obvious reasons. Hence, this book can be divided into three parts-man-made materials, biological materials, and implant materials. The fundamental structure-property relationship is dealt with in the beginning, followed by the biological materials. Implant materials or biomaterials as such are not greatly different from other man-made materials. Therefore, their acceptability in the body is emphasized. In addition, the reasons for a particular implant design and its material selection have been given special attention. An effort is made to convert all the units into SI units although one or 10 two exceptions are made such as A (= 10- m). Also some abbreviations such as vlo (volume %) and wlo (weight %) are used for brevity. To cover the wide range of subjects dealt with in this book, I have used countless original and review articles as well as my own research proposals. A conscientious effort has been made to give credit to the original sources. Credit is given in the captions ofthe illustrations. For the occasional oversight of some tables and figures which could not be traced, the author offers his apologies.
