An Amorphous Peri‐Implant Ligament with Combined Osteointegration and Energy‐Dissipation

Abstract

Progress toward developing metal implants as permanent hard‐tissue substitutes requires both osteointegration to achieve load‐bearing support, and energy‐dissipation to prevent overload‐induced bone resorption. However, in existing implants these two properties can only be achieved separately. Optimized by natural evolution, tooth‐periodontal‐ligaments with fiber‐bundle structures can efficiently orchestrate load‐bearing and energy dissipation, which make tooth–bone complexes survive extremely high occlusion loads (>300 N) for prolonged lifetimes. Here, a bioinspired peri‐implant ligament with simultaneously enhanced osteointegration and energy‐dissipation is presented, which is based on the periodontium‐mimetic architecture of a polymer‐infiltrated, amorphous, titania nanotube array. The artificial ligament not only provides exceptional osteoinductivity owing to its nanotopography and beneficial ingredients, but also produces periodontium‐similar energy dissipation due to the complexity of the force transmission modes and interface sliding. The ligament increases bone–implant contact by more than 18% and simultaneously reduces the effective stress transfer from implant to peri‐implant bone by ≈30% as compared to titanium implants, which as far as is known has not previously been achieved. It is anticipated that the concept of an artificial ligament will open new possibilities for developing high‐performance implanted materials with increased lifespans.

Role of Inorganic Amorphous Constituents in Highly Mineralized Biomaterials and Their Imitations

“…This composite shows a several-fold enhancement of PLA toughness as well as outstanding improvement in load-bearing capacity and viscoelastic figure of merit, which can be attributed to the amorphous phase of alumina as well as the lamellar structure . Recently, the use of amorphous TiO 2 and intergranular ACP phase for mechanical enhancement in artificial biomaterials was also demonstrated. , …”

“…72 This abnormal phenomenon can be attributed to the presence of IAC, which can strengthen interfacial connections between mineral nanoblocks by coordinating with crystal minerals owing to the abundant unsaturated bonds in amorphous materials. 74 Besides the interfacial enhancement, amorphous materials always have excellent energy dissipation capacity, 75 the mechanical properties of IAC themselves can be controlled to tune the mechanical performance of the biomaterials. Aichmayer et al detected an enamel-like layer composed of IAC (primary ACP and ACC), crystal calcite, and fluorapatite in the mandible of crayfish.…”

Bioinspired Nanonetwork Hydroxyapatite from Block Copolymer Templated Synthesis for Mechanical Metamaterials

“…As calculated by integrating the area of the closed-loop at a maximum loading of 1200 μN, the nanonetwork HAp shows a significant enhancement of the value of 1.25 nJ as compared to intrinsic HAp of 0.11 nJ. Moreover, an energy dissipation index, which is the relative contribution of energy dissipation ( W p ) to the total absorbed energy ( W t = W p + W e ), , where W e is the elastically stored energy that was used to further confirm the enhanced energy dissipation of the nanonetwork HAp. The nanonetwork HAp shows a significant enhancement in Wt of 1.28 nJ compared to the Wt of intrinsic HAp (0.15 nJ), giving an energy dissipation index of 97.8% for the nanonetwork HAp as compared to the intrinsic HAp with 71.8% (see Figure S6).…”

Conductive Tracks in Carbon Implanted Titania Nanotubes: Atomic‐Scale Insights from Experimentally Based Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Modeling

“…TiO$$_2$$ nanotube arrays constitute a multifunctional materials system that has attracted significant interest in a broad range of applications during the past decade, ranging from solar cells and photocatalysts to sensors, implants and tissue cultivation platforms. [ 1–7 ] This versatility across different scientific disciplines can be traced back to highly tunable structural and electronic properties that affect physics, chemistry as well as biomedical features of TiO$$_2$$ nanotubes. While key structure–property relationships have been unveiled, recipes for tailored nanotube synthesis have been proposed which include anodization [ 8 ] as well as post‐anodization modification.…”