Bioactive glass coatings: A review

Abstract

Bioactive glasses, discovered by Hench and co-workers at the end of the 1960s, are among the most promising biomaterials for bone repair and reconstruction, mainly thanks to their high bioactivity index. Unfortunately, due to their brittleness and relatively poor mechanical properties, their clinical applications are limited to non-load bearing implants. However, bioactive glasses can be successfully employed as coatings on bioinert metallic substrates, in order to combine high bioactivity with mechanical strength. After a brief introduction to the main properties of biomaterials and bioactive glasses, the present paper provides an overview of the different approaches and available techniques to realise bioactive glass coatings, with a particular emphasis on thermal spray, which is nowadays one of the most popular coating procedures.

Physical and biological characteristics of nanohydroxyapatite and bioactive glasses used for bone tissue engineering

“…Moreover, glasses made by the sol-gel process show bioactivity in a larger compositional range than that of melt-derived systems [102]. In addition, the porous microstructure of sol-gel-derived glasses may promote protein absorption and cell adhesion due to the high specific surface area [103].…”

“…One potential solution to overcome these mechanical shortcomings is the use of bioceramics as coatings on implantable biomaterials and medical devices [92,103]. An alternative approach is to incorporate them as biologically active phases into composite systems.…”

Biomimetic Growth of Hydroxyapatite on Kenaf Fibers

“…1e), a large number of HA crystals can be identified on the mercerized fiber. The microstructures were quite similar to those of HA on bioactive glass (Sola 2011). The mercerized fiber opened up more OH groups to become exposed to the citric acid for chelation with Ca ions.…”

Bioactive glass coatings by suspension plasma spraying from glycolether-based solvent feedstock

“…Numerous techniques such as electrophoretic deposition, sol-gel, enamelling, laser deposition or thermal spray techniques have been employed to obtain such coatings. However, thermal spray techniques and more specifically Atmospheric Plasma Spraying (APS) is the most used method due to the high temperatures reached in the plasma torch and the subsequent fast cooling of the deposited material so that the devitrification of the as-coated glass is inhibited [3,4].…”