ABSTRACT
The orthopedic implant sector counts for much more in the worldwide biomedical industry. In the United States alone, orthopedic implant demand is forecast to rise 9.8% annually to $30.4 billion by the year 2015 (Freedonia Group 2008). Due to their medical benefits, including excellent mechanical properties, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility, titanium and its alloys are widely used in the field. Titanium-based artificial hip, knee, shoulder, fracture fixations, spinal, and dental implants play an important role in improving the quality of life of aged or injured human beings. Nevertheless, a titanium implant may fail too. Lack of integration with bone tissue and infections are major complications of titanium implants (Neoh et al. 2012). In order to meet the long-term service demands, an implant should possess both good bulk mechanical properties and excellent surface properties, including biocompatibility, high corrosion and wear resistance, good osseointegration, and antibacterial activity (Geetha et al. 2009). However, titanium-based materials in use today can hardly satisfy all these requirements. Materials that possess favorable bulk properties such as strength frequently have inadequate surface
15.1 Introduction ..................................................................................... 443 15.2 Biological Requirements for Titanium Surfaces ......................... 444
biological properties such as osseointegration. Thus, surface modification gained an important and decisive place in the field of manufacturing orthopedic or dental implants. Recently, plasma-based technologies attracted much more attention in modifying the surface properties of various biomaterials (Chu et al. 2002; Liu et al. 2004a, 2010). This chapter focuses on utilizing such technologies for surface engineering of titanium-based materials for applications in osseointegration.
