Sol-Gel Production of Bioactive Nanocoatings for Medical Applications. Part 1: An Introduction

Abstract

Coatings offer the possibility of modifying the surface properties of surgical-grade materials to achieve improvements in performance, reliability and biocompatibility. Sol-gel-derived coatings demonstrate promise owing to their relative ease of production, ability to form a physically and chemically pure and uniform coating over complex geometric shapes and potential to deliver exceptional mechanical properties owing to their nanocrystalline structure. Other advantages unique to sol-gel include the production of a homogeneous material, since mixing takes place on the atomic scale, and its relatively low processing temperature avoids decomposition of the coating materials and limits the damage to metallic substrate materials as a result of exposure to elevated temperatures. A range of materials can be adapted easily for a number of biomedical and engineering applications.

Nanodimensional and Nanocrystalline Calcium Orthophosphates

“…Most of these techniques produced rod-like crystals or whiskers, while plate-like shapes were obtained in just a few studies [335,345,347]. Other preparation methods of nanodimensional and/or nanocrystalline apatites of various states, shapes and sizes include sol-gel [30,188,231,232,270,328,[360][361][362][363][364][365][366][367][368][369][370][371][372][373][374][375][376], co-precipitation [271,333,334,[377][378][379][380], mechanochemical approach[65, 250,343,348,[381][382][383][384][385][386][387], mechanical alloying [388,389], ball milling [348,383,…”

Evolving application of biomimetic nanostructured hydroxyapatite

“…51 Many different methodologies have been proposed to prepare nanosized and/or nanocrystalline structures. [52][53][54][55] These are wet chemical precipitation, [56][57][58][59][60] sol-gel synthesis, [61][62][63][64] 77 and several other methods by which nanocrystals of various shapes and sizes can be obtained. [78][79][80] In general, the shape, size, and specific surface area of the apatite nanocrystals appear to be very sensitive to both the reaction temperature and the reactant addition rate.…”

Nanofeatured Titanium Surfaces for Dental Implantology: Biological Effects, Biocompatibility, and Safety

“…The sol-gel coating method enables the coating of an implant surface by a layer of sol-gel containing hydroxyapatite, which is stabilized through thermal cycles [82][83][84][85]. The coating can also contain fluorohydroxyapatite or fluorapatite to increase the biological activity and reduce resorption rate of the coated layer [86][87][88]. Sol-gel derived nanoporous TiO 2 coatings have been proven to enhance soft Journal of Nanomaterials 5 tissue attachment in rat and dog models [89][90][91].…”