Nowadays, the majority of the commercially available calcium phosphate materials is fabricated by 'classical' materials science approaches, i.e., from rather poorly defined slurries or from organic solvents, often at high temperatures and pressures. Bioinspired precipitation of inorganics with (polymeric) additives from aqueous solution, on the other hand, enables the synthesis of intriguing inorganic or organic/inorganic materials that are often much more closely related to biological structures. This article discusses approaches for the fabrication of bio-inspired calcium phosphate hybrid materials by precipitation from aqueous solution. The article focuses on polymers and related self-assembling structures for the design of CaP/organic hybrids and pure CaP with crystal structures and morphologies regulated by the respective additive.

The report shows that simple LbL deposition of positively charged chitosan and negatively charged heparin can be used to efficiently modify the native surface of both NiTi and Ti without any previous treatments. Moreover, mineralization of the polymer multilayers with calcium phosphate leads to surfaces with low contact angles around 70 and 20° for NiTi and Ti, respectively. This suggests that a polymer multilayer/calcium phosphate hybrid coating could be useful for making NiTi or Ti implants that are at the same time antibacterial (via the chitosan), suppress blood clot formation (via the heparin), and favor fast endothelialization (via the improved surface hydrophilicity compared to the respective neat material). magnified image

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