Designing, preparing and evaluation of novel HA/Ti composite coating for endodontic dental implant

Nowadays, application of implants as a new method for replacing extracted teeth have been improved. So, many researches have been performed for improving the characteristics of implants. The aim of this study was to design and produce a desired coating in order to obtaining two goals including improvement of the corrosion behavior of metallic endodontic implant and the bone osseointegration simultaneously. Stainless steel 316L (SS), cobalt-chromium alloy (Vit) and commercial pure titanium (cpTi) were chosen as metallic substrates and hydroxyapatite coating (HAC) were performed by plasma-spraying (PS) process on three different substrates. A novel double layer Hydroxyapatite/Titanium (HA/Ti) composite coating composed of a HA top layer and a Ti under layer was prepared using PS and physical vapor deposition (PVD) process respectively on SS. Structural characterization techniques including XRD, SEM and EDX were utilized to investigate the microstructure, morpholgy and crystallinity of the coatings. Electrochemical potentiodynamic tests were performed in physiological solutions in order to determine and compare the corrosion behavior of the coated and uncoated specimens behavior as an indication of biocmpatibility. Results indicated that the cpTi possesses the highest and SS the lowest corrosion resistance (highest corrosion current density) between uncoated substrates. This trend was independent to the type of physiological environment. The HA coating decreased the corrosion current density of HA coated metallic implants but did not change that trend. HAC acted as a mechanical barrier on the metallic substrate but could not prevent the interaction between metallic substrate and environment completely. The HA/Ti composite coating improved the corrosion behavior of SS. The corrosion current density of HA/Ti coated SS decreased and was exactly similar to single HA coated cpTi in physiological solutions. The results indicated that HA/Ti composite coated SS could be used as an endodontic implant and two goals including improvement of corrosion resistance (biocompatibiiity) and bone osseointegration could be obtained simultaneously.