The deposition of strontium-substituted hydroxyapatite coatings

Strontium substituted hydroxyapatite (SrHA) coatings have received a lot of interest recently as strontium (Sr) has been shown to have the dual benefit of promoting bone formation and reducing bone resorption, in vivo. In this work, SrHA coatings were deposited onto polycrystalline titanium surfaces using radio frequency (RF) magnetron co-sputtering and compared to those deposited from HA alone. In particular, the influence of different levels of Sr-substitution of the sputtering targets (5 and 13% Sr-substituted HA targets) on the properties of the deposited coatings produced at a low discharge power level (150 W) were investigated using FTIR, XPS, XRD, ToFSIMS and AFM techniques (both before and after annealing at 500 °C). The results show that Sr could be successfully incorporated into the HA lattice to form SrHA coatings and that they contained no other impurities. However, the coating produced from the 13% Sr-substituted target had a higher Ca+Sr/P ratio (1.95±0.14) and Sr content when compared to the coating produced from the 5% Sr-substituted target (1.58±0.20). The deposition rate also decreased with increasing Sr content of the sputtering targets. Furthermore, as the Sr content of the coatings increased, so did the preferred 002 orientation of the coating along with increased surface roughness and heterogeneity of the surface features. Therefore, this study has shown that RF magnetron sputtering offers a means to control attendant properties of Sr-substituted HA, such as the crystallinity, stoichiometry, phase purity and surface topography.