Preparation of Composite Resin Coatings and Its Performance Improvement on Ti-Based Dental Implants

Highlights•A Ti-HA/TiO2photocurable composite resin coating was fabricated on TC4 titanium alloy via a simple coating curing process, with controllable thickness and good interfacial bonding.•The porous coating effectively promotes remineralization capacity and bioactivity by introducing bioactive Ca/P elements.•Benefiting from the synergistic photocatalytic effect of Ti-HA and TiO2, the coating achieves a high antibacterial rate.Titanium alloys are widely used in dental implants due to their excellent mechanical properties. However, their inertness and poor antibacterial activity cause interfacial loosening and failure, shortening service life. This study integrates surface microtexturing with coating technologies, employing modified light-curing composite resins to boost the bioactivity of medical titanium alloys via surface modification. The results reveal that surface microtexturing enlarges the coating-substrate contact area by 42.5% compared with rough surfaces, concurrently diminishing stress per unit area, and the coating on microtextured Ti-6Al-4V (TC4) surfaces achieves adhesion with a damaged area of only 0.5%, thereby notably enhancing adhesion between the coating and TC4 matrix. In comparison, with rough surfaces (surface roughness of 0.658 μm), smooth TC4 planes (surface roughness of 0.014 μm) show a significantly reduced bacterial colony count (from 130 ± 6 to 42 ± 3) with an antibacterial rate of 67.7%, as the water contact angle on TC4 surfaces increases with decreasing roughness (reaching 80.95° on the smoothest surface), making bacterial adhesion more challenging and reducing colonization. The composite resin coating based on a mixture of titanium-doped hydroxyapatite and titanium dioxide (Ti-HA/TiO2) further improves the antibacterial rate to 74.6% through a photocatalytic synergistic effect and endows TC4 with excellent remineralization capacity—mineralization deposits appear on the coated surface after 3 days of immersion in artificial saliva, while no obvious deposits are found on uncoated rough and smooth surfaces even after 7 days—thereby enhancing its bioactivity effectively. This study on the modification of Ti-based implant surfaces will enrich the field by introducing new technologies and methodologies. These advancements provide a theoretical basis for improvement of the remineralization capacity and antibacterial properties of Ti-based dental implants, thereby promoting broader biomedical applications.