“…Unfortunately, poor fracture toughness and wear resistance of monolithic HA limit its potential applications as a coating material, especially on load-bearing metallic implants [5,6]. To achieve improved mechanical properties of HA coating, HA composite coatings reinforced with a second phase, such as alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) [7,8], yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) [9,10], and titania [11,12] have been considerably developed in the past two decades. Despite significant improvement achieved in fracture toughness of these HA composite coatings, it should be noted that the addition contents of these ceramic particles, basically biologically inert, are usually as high as 30-50% in weight fraction (wt.%), inevitably leading to degradation of the excellent bioactivity and osteointegration associated with HA.…”