Osteoblast behavior on various ultra short pulsed laser deposited surface coatings

Ultra short pulsed laser deposition technique was utilized to create amorphous diamond, alumina and carbon nitride, and two different titania coatings on silicon wafers, thus producing five different surface deposited films with variable physico-chemical properties. The surface characterizations, including the roughness, the contact angle and the zeta potential measurements were performed before we tested the growth properties of human osteoblast-like Saos-2 cells on these surfaces (three separate experiments). The average roughness and hydrophobicity were the highest on titania-deposited surfaces, while carbon nitride was the most hydrophilic one. Osteoblasts on all surfaces showed a flattened, spread-out morphology, although on amorphous diamond the cell shape appeared more elongated than on the other surfaces. On rough titania, the area covered by the osteoblasts was smaller than on the other ones. Cell proliferation assay did not show any statistically significant differences.