Mechanically and Biologically Biocompatible Metallic Material Fabricated by Combining Porous Titanium with Medical Polymer

摘要

One of the concepts for preparing novel metallic biomaterials possessing both an ultra-low Young's modulus that is almost the same as that of human bone and biofunctions usually possessed by living tissues is proposed in the present study. By introducing pores in bulk materials, the Young's modulus of the materials can be reduced to almost the same value as that of bone. Further, filling pores of porous materials with a polymer possessing a certain biofunction is expected to cause the biofunctionalization of the porous materials. Therefore, porous titanium (pTi) filled with polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) was fabricated using a new process developed in our laboratory. Then, the effect of the PMMA filling on the tensile strength and Young's modulus of pTi was examined. As a result, it was found that the PMMA filling was useful for improving the tensile strength while maintaining a low Young's modulus of pTi.