Recent Progress in the Surface Modification of Bone Implant Using Plasma Spraying Technique

Metallic implants have been widely used in the treatment of a variety of hard tissue-related diseases. However, the currently used metallic implants lack strong osteointegration and antimicrobial ability,which often leads to the implant failure. Surface modification can not only maintain the excellent bulk properties of the metal material, but also improve their surface properties. At present, surface modification has been widely used to improve the osseointegration and endow the implant with promising antibacterial functions. Among many surface modification technologies, plasma spraying has been applied commercially in surface modification of artificial joints and dental implants due to its technical maturity, high quality controllability, applicability to a wide range of raw materials and ability of continuous production, etc. In this review, the advantages of plasma spraying technology and its recent research progress in surface modification of metallic implants were introduced from aspects of improving osteogenic activity, providing antibacterial functions and enhancing bone immunomodulation ability of the implant, and the advantages of plasma spraying technology in optimizing surface chemical properties of orthopedic implants were described. The advantages and potential application of plasma spraying technology in the fabrication and modulation of surface nanostructures of the coating were discussed, which could provide new reference for the surface design of biomedical implants. In addition, combined with our work related to plasma spray related to biomedical coatings, some perspectives about new possible application of plasma spraying technology in enhancing the performance of bone implants were proposed.