Antibacterial metals and alloys for potential biomedical implants

Metals and alloys,including stainless steel,titanium and its alloys,cobalt alloys,and other metals and alloys have been widely used clinically as implant materials,but implant-related infection or inflammation is still one of the main causes of implantation failure.The bacterial infection or inflammation that seriously threatens human health has already become a worldwide complaint.Antibacterial metals and alloys recently have attracted wide attention for their long-term stable antibacterial ability,good mechanical properties and good biocompatibility in vitro and in vivo.In this review,common antibacterial alloying elements,antibacterial standards and testing methods were introduced.Recent developments in the design and manufacturing of antibacterial metal alloys containing various antibacterial agents were described in detail,including antibacterial stainless steel,antibacterial titanium alloy,antibacterial zinc and alloy,antibacterial magnesium and alloy,antibacterial cobalt alloy,and other antibacterial metals and alloys.Researches on the antibacterial properties,mechanical properties,corrosion resistance and biocompatibility of antibacterial metals and alloys have been summarized in detail for the first time.It is hoped that this review could help researchers understand the development of antibacterial alloys in a timely manner,thereby could promote the development of antibacterial metal alloys and the clinical application.

Tribocorrosion behavior of antibacterial Ti-Cu sintered alloys in simulated biological environments

Ti-Cu alloys have strong antibacterial proper-ties,high strength and excellent corrosion resistance,which might be used in orthopedic and dental implants.In this paper,the tribocorrosion behaviors of Ti-Cu alloy with different Cu contents were investigated in four simulated biological environments compared with cp-Ti.The results showed that Ti-Cu sintered alloy exhibited higher corro-sion resistance,lower coefficient friction and wear loss than cp-Ti in all tested solutions due to the formation of fine and homogeneously distributed Ti_(2)Cu phase,espe-cially in solution with lower F ion and pH.High Cu content and extrusion process improved the corrosion resistance and the wear resistance because of high Ti_(2)Cu phase fraction and fine grain size.However,aggressive solution,such as the solution with lower F ion and pH,accelerated wear in comparison with other solutions for cp-Ti and Ti-Cu sintered alloys.Scanning electron microscope(SEM)surface morphology demonstrated that the wear mecha-nism of cp-Ti during tribocorrosion process was mainly abrasive wear and adhesive wear while that of Ti-Cu alloy was abrasive wear.In summary,Ti-Cu sintered alloys showed much better tribocorrosion property than cp-Ti,which shows great potential application in condition for wear and corrosion resistance.

Combinatorial development of antibacterial FeCoCr-Ag medium entropy alloy

Antibacterial activity and mechanical properties of FeCoCr-Ag medium entropy alloys were studied via combinatorial fabrication paired with high-throughput characterizations.It was found that the antibacterial activity and mechanical properties exhibit non-linear dependence on the content of Ag addition.Within the studied alloys,(FeCoCr)_(80)Ag_(20) possesses an optimized combination of different properties for potential applications as antibacterial coating materials.The underlying mechanism is ascribed to the formation of a dual-phase structure that leads to competition between the role of Ag phase and FeCoCr phase at different Ag content.The results not only demonstrate the power and effectiveness of combinatorial methods in multi-parameter optimization but also indicate the potential of high entropy alloys as antibacterial materials.

A novel biomedical titanium alloy with high antibacterial property and low elastic modulus

β-type titanium alloys have attracted much attention as implant materials because of their low elastic modulus and high strength,which is closer to human bones and can avoid the problem of stress fielding and extend the lifetime of prosthetics.However,other issues,such as the infection or inflammation postimplantation,still trouble the titanium alloy's clinical application.In this paper,we developed a novel nearβ-titanium alloy(Ti-13Nb-13Zr-13Ag,TNZA)with low elastic modulus and strong antibacterial ability by the addition of Ag element followed by proper microstructure controlling,which could reduce the stress shielding and bacterial infections simultaneously.The microstructure,mechanical properties,corrosion resistance,antibacterial properties and cell toxicity were studied using SEM,electrochemical testing,mechanical test and cell tests.The results have demonstrated that TNZA alloy exhibited an elastic modulus of 75-87 GPa and a strong antibacterial ability(up to 98%reduction)and good biocompatibility.Moreover,it was also shown that this alloy's corrosion resistance was better than that of Ti-13Nb-13Zr.All the results suggested that Ti-13Nb-13Zr-13Ag might be a competitive biomedical titanium alloy.

An antibacterial mechanism of titanium alloy based on micro-area potential difference induced reactive oxygen species

Antimicrobial material is highly desired because of the increasing demand in biomedical application to prevent from the formation of biofilm.A common strategy for enhancing the antibacterial property of a metal material is to incorporate toxic metal such as Cu and Ag.However,the reported Cu^(2+)or Ag~+released concentration from antibacterial alloys was much less than the reported minimum inhibitory ion concentrations(MIC),revealing the existence of an unknown alternative antimicrobial mechanism not relying on the toxicity of the metal ions.Herein,we proposed a new antibacterial mechanism that the antibacterial effectiveness of the different alloys is proportional to the micro-area potential differences(MAPDs)on the surface of the alloys.We designed three kinds of Ti-M(M=Zr,Ta and Au)alloys to eliminate the potential antibacterial contribution from Cu and Ag ion.We demonstrated that high MAPDs are associated with great production of reactive oxygen species(ROS),resulting in the killing effect to the biofilm known to be associated with implant infections(Staphlococcus aureus and Escherichia coli).These results provide new insights for the design of antibacterial alloys.