Professor Tom Webster and a post-doctoral researcher, Jeremiah Ejiofor recently reported the results of their work on developing nanomaterials for orthopedic implant surfaces at the Nanoparticles 2003 conference in Boston, MA. Coverage of this work was recently posted at nanotechweb.org.

Professor Webster tested both nanophase and conventional samples of titanium, titanium-aluminium-vanadium alloy and cobalt-chromium-molybdenum alloy. The process they used assured that the only difference between the conventional and nanophase samples was the surface roughness. For all three materials, osteoblasts adhered better to the rougher surface of the nanophase version than the conventional sample. For example, about 2300 out of 2500 bone cells in suspension adhered to the nanophase titanium alloy after three hours, compared with about 1300 cells adhering to the conventional alloy.

According to Professor Webster, these materials containing the nanometer-scale bumps could be critical to keeping the body from rejecting artificial parts, offering hope in developing longer lasting and more natural implants.

The full article is available at: http://nanotechweb.org/articles/news/2/11/7/1.