Development and evaluation of bioactive glass coatings obtained by thermal spray technology: State of the art.

Abstract

The world of implants is a necessary technological source for humans, but like all technological sources it is progressing. This progress it's related to a constant development of new materials that must comply the biomechanical and biological requirements demanded by an implant, to reduce the number of failed implants, mainly due to infections. As a booming material, PEEK polymer properties will be described in depth in this study and different methodologies for improving and adapting this material to the needs of an implant will be reviewed. Due to the fact that this Final Degree Project has been carried out with the support of the Thermal Spraying Center (Materials Science Department), this study will be focused on thermal spraying techniques for biomedical applications, more specifically atmospheric plasma spraying (APS) and cold gas spraying (CGS). Through these process, new materials based on bioactive glasses can be deposited as a coating to improve the bone-implant interaction of PEEK and try to be able to replace the typical commercial coatings formulated with hydroxyapatite. In the experimental version, the main objective of this project was to prepare and characterize bioglass coatings on a PEEK substrate obtained by cold gas spray, more specifically low pressure cold gas spray (LP-CGS). Considering that this was not possible, a bibliographic search has been made and the results of other investigations on bioactive glass and hydroxyapatite glass coatings will be compared using the spraying methods above mentioned.