Bioactive sol-gel coatings for orthopaedic prosthesis

Sol-gel materials have been proposed in last years for clinical applications. In this work, bioactive sol-gel coatings were prepared from suspensions of up to 25% wt. of bioactive glass (CaO . SiO2.P2O5) particles in a hybrid sol obtained from TEOS and MTES. Thick dip-coatings showed in vitro bioactivity after a few days, but glass-particles dissolution promotes a slight reduction in the corrosion resistance. In order to overpass this problem, a two-stage sol-gel coating system that includes a first SiO2 hybrid film, acting as barrier against corrosion, and an external bioactive layer from glass particle suspension is proposed. The obtained samples revealed significant improvement in their electrochemical behaviour, and showed in vitro bioactivity.