Bioactive glass-ceramics coatings on alumina

In this work, aiming to combine the mechanical performances of alumina with the surface properties of a bioactive material, we coated full density alumina substrates by a bioactive glass-ceramic GC. This latter was specially tailored, in term of constituents and specific quantity to have a thermal expansion coefficient close to that of alumina (8.5-9^* 10^-6/°C) which is lower than most of the bioactive glasses and glass-ceramics already in use. In this way, we sought to avoid, as much as possible, the crack formation and propagation due to residual stresses generated by the thermal expansion coefficients mismatch. Furthermore, the high reactivity of alumina toward the glass-ceramic was carefully controlled to avoid deep compositional modification of the GC that will negatively affect its bioactivity. At this purpose, an intermediate layer of an appropriate glass G was coated prior to coat the bioactive glass-ceramic. On the materials obtained, preliminary biological tests have been done to evaluate glass-ceramic biocompatibility respect to alumina.