Luisa Wenzel

Bachelor student

Electrophoretic deposition of bioactive composite coatings with drug delivery capability

 

Supervisors: Zoya Hadzhieva, Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini

Titanium is frequently used as implant material due to its biocompatibility, corrosion resistance and advantageous fatigue strength [1]. However, Ti has no bioactive impact in the human body, leading to insufficient tissue integration and potential implant loosening. In addition, postoperative bacterial infections still remain one of the major causes for implant failure. Therefore, the current project focuses on the development of bioactive and antibacterial drug-eluting coatings based on bioactive glass nanoparticles and biopolymers on titanium by electrophoretic deposition (EPD). In order to achieve a precise control over the drug release kinetics, pre-assembled polymer nanocarriers will be introduced in the coating matrix [2, 3]. The EPD parameters will be optimized via statistical analysis tools, while the final coatings will be characterized regarding their morphology, chemical composition, drug-release capability and degradation behavior.

[1] F. Maciąg, T. Moskalewicz, K. Kowalski, A. Łukaszczyk, Z. Hadzhieva, and A. R. Boccaccini, “The Effect of Electrophoretic Deposition Parameters on the Microstructure and Adhesion of Zein Coatings to Titanium Substrates,” Materials (Basel, Switzerland), vol. 14, no. 2, 2021. doi: 10.3390/ma14020312.

[2] J. Song, et al., “Electrophoretic Deposition of Chitosan Coatings Modified with Gelatin Nanospheres To Tune the Release of Antibiotics”, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces vol. 8, pp. 13785–13792, 2016.

[3] X. Cheng, D. Long, L. Chen, J. A. Jansen, S. C. Leeuwenburgh, and F. Yang, “Electrophoretic deposition of silk fibroin coatings with pre-defined architecture to facilitate precise control over drug delivery,” Bioactive Materials, vol. 6, no. 11, pp. 4243–4254, 2021. doi: 10.1016/j.bioactmat.2021.03.046.