Surface functionalization of titanium screws for orthopaedic implant applications

When establishing intermaxillary fixation using bone screws, the removal of such elements represents a potential complication. In this context, the bone-screw interface plays a major role. Thus, surfaces need to be modified to interact with the human body inhibiting osseointegration but fostering bone healing. Surface coating can represent a viable way to solve this issue. Actual coating procedures and difficulties in obtaining repeatable surfaces with sufficient adhesion strength refrain industries from applying such methodology. This work presents an experimental procedure to modify screw surfaces by laser ablation and to coat them with a human-tested bioabsorbable polymer by 3D bioprinting in order to fabricate intermaxillary screws. The overall results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology to obtain high performance titanium fixation screws. (c) 2024 CIRP. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.