Comparative study of silanisation reactions for the biofunctionalisation of Ti-surfaces

In the present work, we report on the biofunctionalisation of silanised Ti-surfaces with gelatin. In recent years, a large number of papers have been published about the silanisation of different substrates including Ti-surfaces for biomedical applications. However, a comparative study evaluating the effects of different pre-treatment methods (cleaning and/or oxidation) and the efficiency of different silanisation reactions has to our information not yet been published. Since a clean and reproducible surface is required for studying structure–property relations, all Ti-surfaces were subjected to a three step procedure including a cleaning step, an oxidation step and a silanisation step. XPS analysis and contact angle measurements revealed that the pre-treatment of the Ti samples (cleaning + oxidation) had a drastic effect both on the surface composition and its wettability. A detailed study on the effect of different silanisation parameters indicated that the siloxane concentration, the siloxane type, the solvent and a catalyst affect the coupling efficiency of siloxanes to Ti-surfaces. Stability studies revealed a dependency between the siloxane type and the stability of the siloxane coating against hydrolytic cleavage from a Ti-surface. Since Ti-surfaces modified with a methacrylate containing silane possessed the highest hydrolytic stability, these surfaces were selected for the subsequent immobilisation of methacrylamide-modified gelatin via high energy irradiation induced cross-linking. The present work clearly demonstrates the need of a proper reaction strategy for immobilising ligands on Ti-surfaces.