Improved bioactivity of selective laser melting titanium: Surface modification with micro-/nano-textured hierarchical...

Selective laser melting (SLM) titanium requires surface modification to improve its bioactivity. The microrough surface of it can be utilized as the micro primary substrate to create a micro-/nano-textured topography for improved bone regeneration. In this study, the microrough SLM titanium substrate was optimized by sandblasting, and nano-porous features of orderly arranged nanotubes and disorderly arranged nanonet were produced by anodization (SAN) and alkali-heat treatment (SAH), respectively. The results were compared with the control group of an untreated surface (native-SLM) and a microtopography only surface treated by acid etching (SLA). The effects of the different topographies on cell functions and bone formation performance were evaluated in vitro and in vivo. It was found that micro-/nano-textured topographies of SAN and SAH showed enhanced cell behaviour relative to the microtopography of SLA with significantly higher proliferation on the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th day (P<0.05) and higher total protein contents on the 14th day (P<0.05). In vivo, SAN and SAH formed more successively regenerated bone, which resulted in higher bone-implant contact (BIC%) and bone-bonding force than native-SLM and SLA. In addition, the three-dimensional nanonet of SAH was expected to be more similar to native extracellular matrix (ECM) and thus led to better bone formation. The alkaline phosphatase activity of SAH was significantly higher than the other three groups at an earlier stage of the 7th day (P<0.05) and the BIC% was nearly double that of native-SLM and SLA in the 8th week. In conclusion, the addition of nano-porous features on the microrough SLM titanium surface is effective in improving the bioactivity and bone regeneration performance, in which the ECM-like nanonet with a disorderly arranged biomimetic feature is suggested to be more efficient than nanotubes.