Industrially scaled pulsed laser deposition based coating techniques for the realization of hemocompatible surfaces for blood contact applications

Abstract

Non-thrombogenic blood contacting surfaces and appropriate blood flow characteristics are essential for clinical application. State-of-the-art coatings are based on heparin and struggle with the problem of bleeding. Thus, there is increasing demand for developing new coating materials for improved human body acceptance. Materials deposited by vacuum coating techniques would be an excellent alternative if the coating temperatures can be kept low due to the applied substrate materials of low temperature resistance (mostly polymers). Under these circumstances, adequate film structure and high adhesion can be reached by the Pulsed Laser Deposition at room temperature (RT-PLD), which was developed to an industrial-scaled process at Laser Center Leoben. This process was applied to deposit Ti, TiN, TiCN and diamond-like carbon (DLC) on polyurethane, titanium and silicon substrates to study the biological interactions to blood cells and the kinetic mechanism of eukaryote cell attachment. Besides high biological acceptance, distinct differences for the critical delamination shear stress were found for the coatings, indicating higher adhesion at higher carbon contents.