The project to be carried out at the University of Maryland, College Park deals with innovative fabrication of microporous surfaces with nano-roughness on biomedical titanium implants. Present biomedical implants such as hip joints have low longevity of 10 to 15 years. One of the primary reasons for low longevity is poor interfacial bonding strength between the implant and the bone. This project addresses this problem by creating controlled microporous surfaces with nano-roughness on titanium implant materials so that bone can grow onto these surfaces thereby significantly increasing the interlocking. The specific goals include fabrication of microporous surfaces by carving out from the titanium surface by innovative plasma processing techniques. Further the microporous surfaces will be nano-roughened either by plasma techniques or polymerization techniques. This project has outstanding broader impacts. A successful completion of this project will result in new, untested fabrication techniques to improve interlocking, increasing the strength of the implant-bone interfaces. When these techniques are adapted to current biomedical implants, the longevity of the implants can be significantly increased beyond the current limit of 10 to 15 years. This will greatly improve the quality of life and at the same time reduce health care costs. Further, a graduate student will be trained in this project adding to the pool of scientists who can carry out further research in this direction and/or help the biomedical implant industry.
