Coating of medical implants

Coating of medical implants

Coating of medical implants – As part of our abilities to form different coatings, we have focused for many years in functional coatings and in particular coating of medical implants such as stents and orthopedic implants. These are called sometimes smart or functionalized coatings as they provide multiple functions such as antibacterial and increasing the osteogenesis. We had a fruitful collaboration with Prof. Noam Eliaz from the Tel Aviv University and focused on the electrochemical coating of titanium based orthopedic implants by hydroxyapatite (HAp). We have succeeded to develop new approached for the electrochemical deposition of hydroxyapatite nanoparticles by applying moderate potentials to negatively charged HAp nanoparticles. In addition, we have been able to incorporate different antibiotics into nanoparticles to accommodate, for the first time, drugs or in the course of electrochemical deposition. The coating is very often made by the "nano to nano" approach where we drive the destabilization of the nanoparticles in solution by applying a potential.