Wetting behaviour of laser synthetic surface microtextures on Ti-6Al-4V for bioapplication

Wettability at the surface of an implant material plays a key role in its success as it modulates the protein adsorption and thereby influences cell attachment and tissue integration at the interface. Hence, surface engineering of implantable materials to enhance wettability to physiological fluid under in vivo conditions is an area of active research. In light of this, in the present work, laser-based optical interference and direct melting techniques were used to develop synthetic microtextures on Ti-6Al-4V alloys, and their effects on wettability were studied systematically. Improved wettability to simulated body fluid and distilled water was observed for Ca-P coatings obtained by direct melting technique. This superior wettability was attributed to both the appropriate surface chemistry and the three-dimensional surface features obtained using this technique. To assert a better control on surface texture and wettability, a three-dimensional thermal model based on COMSOL's multiphysics was employed to predict the features obtained by laser melting technique. The effect of physical texture and wetting on biocompatibility of laser-processed Ca-P coatings was evaluated in the preliminary efforts on culturing of mouse MC3T3-E1 osteoblast cells.