On the Polymeric Coating Deposition Techniques to Increase Body Acceptance and Allow Drug Delivery in Smart Bio-devices

Currently, prosthetic devices have been significantly improved thanks to highly biocompatible metallic alloys, such as titanium alloys, and owing to the use of antibiotic treatments to allow higher acceptance of the implant. However, risks of infection or implants collapse are always possible since the human body recognizes prosthetic devices as foreign bodies and reacts to them accordingly. The surface of a prosthetic device guides the first interactions with the surrounding environment, and thus the necessity to act on the prosthesis surface with a local approach arises. Indeed, the creation of surface coatings that can potentially be loaded to perform local drug delivery represents a way to reduce systemic antibiotic delivery while improving body tolerance to the implanted devices. Within this framework, the current study aims to investigate the influence of different techniques applied to produce polymer-based coatings upon titanium alloy bio-devices, with the purpose of optimizing their durability. Specifically, the experimental campaign examined three different coating techniques (electrophoretic deposition, dip coating, and spray coating), to compare the results in terms of coating uniformity and mechanical adhesion to the titanium alloy.