Abstract
Recently, tantalum has been attracting much attention for its anticorrosion resistance and biocompatibility, and it has been widely used in surface modification for implant applications. To improve its osteogenic differentiation of human bone marrow stem cells (hBMSCs), a micro/nano structure has been fabricated on the tantalum coating surface through the combination of anodic oxidation and plasma spraying method. The morphology, composition, and microstructure of the modified coating were comprehensively studied by employing scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) as well as transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The effects of hierarchical structures as well as micro-porous structure of tantalum coating on the behavior for human bone marrow stem cells (hBMSCs) were evaluated and compared at both cellular and molecular levels in vitro. The experimental results show that a hierarchical micro/nano structure with Ta2O5 nanotubes spread onto a micro-scale tantalum coating has been fabricated successfully, which is confirmed to promote cell adhesion and spreading. Besides, the hierarchical micro/nano tantalum coating can provide 1.5~2.1 times improvement in gene expression, compared with the micro-porous tantalum coating. It demonstrates that it can effectively enhance the proliferation and differentiation of hBMSCs in vitro.
Highlights
Metallic implants such as titanium and its alloys, which possess excellent mechanical properties and biocompatibility, have been extensively used to treat hard tissue disorders [1,2]
It can be seen that three diffraction peaks appear at 2θ = 38.47◦, 55.55◦ and 69.58◦ on the X-ray diffraction (XRD) profile of the micro-porous tantalum (MT) coating, which corresponds to the planes of (110), (200) and (211) of Ta with a cubic structure (JCPDS#001-1182, Im-3m), respectively, implying that the MT coating mainly contains Ta phases
While for the micro/nano tantalum (MNT) coating, the distinctive peaks mainly come from the tantalum oxide Ta2 O5, indicating that oxidation of Ta occurred in the anodizing process
Summary
Metallic implants such as titanium and its alloys, which possess excellent mechanical properties and biocompatibility, have been extensively used to treat hard tissue disorders [1,2]. Ta coating with micro-porous structures fabricated by plasma spraying has been demonstrated that it can promote in-growth of bone tissue as well as formation of mechanical interaction with host bone tissue [12,13,14,15,16]. These kinds of micro-rough surfaces can depress the early cell responses and a smaller bone mass accumulated compared with a smooth surface [17,18,19,20,21,22,23].
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