Bioactive Ceramic Coatings

Abstract

Some kinds of metals, such as titanium and its alloys, bond directly to living bone without fibrous tissue. One of the key techniques for enhancing boneforming ability of the metallic biomaterials is to modify their surface using bioactive ceramics. This chapter introduces various coatings on the metals to give high bioactivity, which is to have an effect on bonding to living bone. The first section is concerned with bioactive ceramic coatings using calcium phosphates or calcium silicates. These coatings show high bonding strength and enhance the biocompatibility, which refers to ability of materials to interact with living tissue and cells, in vivo and in vitro. The next section describes bioactive glass and glass-ceramic coatings on the metal surface. These materials have a significant advantage in that their chemical/physical properties can be controlled by the choice of the chemical composition. The third section is concerned with modification of Ti and its alloys for forming bioactive oxide layers.

In-vitro bioassay of electrophoretically deposited hydroxyapatite–zirconia nanocomposite coating on Ti–6Al–7Nb implant

“…For so many years, efforts have been focused to the modification of the Ti surface to improve the implant-tissue osteointegration, due to the difficulty of integration with bone tissues [3,4]. Many studies have been conducted to incorporate bioactive ceramic coatings to Ti-based implants, to achieve the bioactive potential and required mechanical strength simultaneously [5][6][7]. Among a variety of bioactive materials which have been utilised to enhance the osteointegration, hydroxyapatite (Ca 10 (PO 4 ) 6 (OH) 2 ; HA) coatings have shown good fixation to the bone and enhanced biocompatibility owing to the biological and chemical similarity of HA to hard tissues, and consequently its direct bonding to the bone [8][9][10].…”