Effect of titanium carbide coating by ion plating plasma-assisted deposition on osteoblast response: A chemical, morphological and gene expression investigation

Graphitic carbon in a nanostructured titanium oxycarbide thin film to improve implant osseointegration

“…This sequence produced coating layers with unprecedented preliminary results in biological tests in vitro, which are predictive of good results in vivo and may have an industrial application. We have obtained full evidence that osteoblasts grown on the coated samples have a higher proliferation rate, an increased formation of filopodia, and a positively improved mRNA synthesis of proteins involved in bone formation, when compared to those grown on uncoated ones [6,7].…”

“…Primary human osteoblasts (hOB) were isolated from bone fragments obtained from surgical procedures and cultured, as described elsewhere [5][6][7], by using McCoy culture medium supplemented with 10% Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS). Test substrates (untreated and treated Ti disks 13 mm × 2 mm) were seeded with hOB at a density of 2 × 10 4 /cm 2 and cultured in McCoy supplemented with 1% FBS, for 6 h at 37°C in 5% CO 2 .…”

“…Starting from the good results reported in the literature for carbon species [4,[11][12][13] and on the basis of our results with TiC [5][6][7], we tried to build a nanostructured coating layer for implants, mainly composed of sp 2 carbon. Such a layer should be an ideal anchoring material both for Ti carbide, which can give hardness to the Ti implant, and for Ti oxides, which increases biocompatibility, along with graphitic carbon.…”

“…We have long been investigating compositional effects on thin layer deposits containing carbon as TiC, able to stimulate the integration of an orthopedic prosthesis into the bone tissue [5][6][7]. We tested two different techniques, Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) and Ion Plating Plasma Assisted (IPPA), to coat Ti prostheses.…”

“…However, the PLD deposition is unfit for industrial application, since the apparatus allows one to coat only one substrate at a time. In IPPA, first proposed by Mattox [8,9], and further developed by Misiano [10], the samples are introduced in a high-vacuum chamber containing a Ti target attached to a magnetron sputter source; a radiofrequency (RF) is applied to the sample holder, and ethylene is used as the reactive gas [6,7]. This sequence produced coating layers with unprecedented preliminary results in biological tests in vitro, which are predictive of good results in vivo and may have an industrial application.…”