Background: Selective laser melting (SLM) titanium is an ideal option to manufacture customized implants with suitable surface modification to improve its bioactivity. The peri-implant soft tissues form a protective tissue barrier for the underlying osseointegration. Therefore, original microrough SLM surfaces should be treated for favorable attachment of surrounding soft tissues.
Material and methods: In this study, anodic oxidation (AO) was applied on the microrough SLM titanium substrate to form TiO₂ nanotube arrays. After that, calcium phosphate (CaP) nanoparticles were embedded into the nanotubes or the interval of nanotubes by electrochemical deposition (AOC). These two samples were compared to untreated (SLM) samples and accepted mechanically polished (MP) SLM titanium samples. Scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, surface roughness, and water contact angle measurements were used for surface characterization. The primary human gingival epithelial cells (HGECs) and human gingival fibroblasts (HGFs) were cultured for cell assays to determine adhesion, proliferation, and adhesion-related gene expressions.
Results: For HGECs, AOC samples showed significantly higher adhesion, proliferation, and adhesion-related gene expressions than AO and SLM samples (P <0.05) and similar exceptional ability in above aspects to MP samples. At the same time, AOC samples showed the highest adhesion, proliferation, and adhesion-related gene expressions for HGFs (P <0.05).
Conclusion: By comparison between each sample, we could confirm that both anodic oxidation and CaP nanoparticles had improved bioactivity, and their combined utilization may likely be superior to mechanical polishing, which is most commonly used and widely accepted. Our results indicated that creating appropriate micro-/nano-topographies can be an effective method to affect cell behavior and increase the stability of the peri-implant mucosal barrier on SLM titanium surfaces, which contributes to its application in dental and other biomedical implants.
Keywords: additive manufacturing, surface modification, soft tissue barrier, dental implants