Biocompatibility of (Ba,Ca)(Zr,Ti)O₃ piezoelectric ceramics for bone replacement materials

Abstract

Total joint replacement implants are generally designed to physically mimic the biological environment to ensure compatibility with the host tissue. However, implant instability exposes patients to long recovery periods, high risk for revision surgeries, and high expenses. Introducing electrical stimulation to the implant site to accelerate healing is promising, but the cumbersome nature of wired devices is detrimental to the implant design. We propose a novel strategy to stimulate cells at the implant site by utilizing piezoelectric ceramics as electrical stimulation sources. The inherent ability of these materials to form electric surface potentials under mechanical load allows them to act as internal power sources. This characteristic is commonly exploited in non‐biomedical applications such as transducers or sensors. We investigate calcium/zirconium‐doped barium titanate (BCZT) ceramics in an in vitro environment to determine their potential as implant materials. BCZT exhibits low cytotoxicity with human osteoblast and endothelial cells as well as high piezoelectric responses. Microstructural adaptation was identified as a route for optimizing piezoelectric behavior. Our results show that BCZT is a promising system for biomedical applications. Its characteristic ability to autonomously generate electric surface potentials opens the possibility to functionalize existing bone replacement implant designs to improve implant ingrowth and long‐term stability.

Electroconductive scaffolds for tissue engineering applications

“…It is for example unclear how current passed through a highly conductive substrate could effect cells that are cultures on the top of such substrate 6,62 . Others suggest that piezoelectric effect could be used to influence cell behaviour 9,34 without explaining how an electric field that is present inside a piezoelectric material, could influence cells that are located at the interface. Studies describe above open several interesting questions, that to my knowledge are not answered in the current TE literature.…”

“…In recent years, large number of studies have combined bioelectronic processes with material science and engineering to development materials and systems for applications in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, drug delivery, interfacing electronics with biological systems, electrotaxis and bio-sensing [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] . Biological electricity includes phenomena and cellular processes, where electric fields, charge separation or ionic currents are a key ingredient.…”

“…Trondheim, Norway; E-mail: pawel.sikorski@ntnu.no for applications in tissue engineering (TE) and regenerative medicine [5][6][7]9,26,34,[37][38][39][40] . It is suggested that electroconductive materials (materials that can carry electronic current such as metals or conductive polymers) can engage with bioelectronic signals.…”

The paradigm of the filler's dielectric permittivity and aspect ratio in high-k polymer nanocomposites for energy storage applications

“…† Besides, the Ba 0.85 Ca 0.15 Zr 0.10 Ti 0.90 O 3 (BCZT) lead-free ceramic known for its excellent dielectric, ferroelectric and energy storage performances was chosen. [45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] In the first step, near-spherical BZCT was embedded in the PLA matrix. Moreover, a core-shell structuration step was designed via polydopamine (PDA), which is an extensively used organic compound for this process, 21,54,55 to enhance the compatibility between BCZT and PLA.…”

Biologically Compatible Lead-Free Piezoelectric Composite for Acoustophoresis Based Particle Manipulation Techniques

“…Four samples with different thicknesses of BCZT thin composite layers (named as Ba32, Ba48, Ba90, and Ba140) were fabricated and investigated in order to design a functional acoustophoresis micromechanical fluidic element, based on the principle of bulk acoustic generation for particle control technologies. Based on the scientific papers [ 18 , 19 ], materials used for synthesis are biologically compatible. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques were used to evaluate a chemical-phase composition of BCZT composite; scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used for surface morphology investigations; wettability measurements were used to find its surface free energy (SFE); a laser triangular sensing system was used for evaluation of piezoelectric properties.…”