Intravascular blood pump
AssigneeABIOMED, Inc.
InventorsFrank Kirchhoff, Thorsten Siess, Wolfgang Kerkhoffs
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An intravascular blood pump having a rotatable shaft carrying an impeller and a housing with an opening through which the shaft extends with the impeller positioned outside the housing. The shaft and the housing have surfaces forming a circumferential gap which has a gap width of no more than 2 μm over at least part of the length of the gap and at least one of the surfaces forming the gap is made of a material having a thermal conductivity of at least 100 W/mK, in particular a ceramic material such as silicon carbide.
Claims25
An intravascular blood pump, comprising a rotatable shaft carrying an impeller and a housing having an opening, wherein the shaft extends through the opening with the impeller positioned outside said housing, the shaft and the housing having surfaces forming a circumferential gap within said opening, wherein the gap has a length and has a width of 2 μm or less over at least a part of said length and wherein at least one of the surfaces forming the gap is made of a material having a thermal conductivity of at least 100 W/mK;
- wherein the gap converges towards an impeller-side end of the gap and said width of 2 μm or less is located somewhere within 50% of the length of the gap closest to said impeller-side end of the gap.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.