Adhesion of regenerating bone tissue to orthopaedic implants is critical to their long‐term success. Titanium has excess rigidity, interferes with imaging, and complicates radiation treatment. Poly(ether‐ether‐ketone) (PEEK) is a preferred material, but is limited by biological inertness. We show that plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) imparts osteoadhesion on 3D printed PEEK using in vitro pull‐off tests and in vivo torque tests in a sheep scapula model. PIII‐PEEK prints incubated with bone cells in vitro show 9–14 times higher pull‐off strength, compared to untreated implants. Treated implants in vivo require seven times higher torque for release from the sheep scapula. We propose PIII‐PEEK as a scaffold material with tensile properties analogous to collagen, the fibrillar component of bone, to produce fracture‐tough fully integrating scaffolds.

Free flap surgery is currently the only successful method used by surgeons to reconstruct critical-sized defects of the jaw, and is commonly used in patients who have had bony lesions excised due to oral cancer, trauma, infection or necrosis. However, donor site morbidity remains a significant flaw of this strategy. Various biomaterials have been under investigation in search of a suitable alternative for segmental mandibular defect reconstruction. Hydrogels are group of biomaterials that have shown their potential in various tissue engineering applications, including bone regeneration, both through in vitro and in vivo pre-clinical animal trials. This review discusses different types of hydrogels, their fabrication techniques, 3D printing, their potential for bone regeneration, outcomes, and the limitations of various hydrogels in preclinical models for bone tissue engineering. This review also proposes a modified technique utilizing the potential of hydrogels combined with scaffolds and cells for efficient reconstruction of mandibular segmental defects.

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