Abstract:
Carbon fiber reinforced polyether ether ketone (CF/PEEK) are widely used in biomedical applications due to their stable chemical properties, excellent physical and mechanical properties, and the radiopacity of CF/PEEK for orthopedic and dental implants. However, CF/PEEK may lead to poor osseointegration due to the biologically inert surface it presents. Bioactive glasses (BGs) have good osteoconductive properties and weak osteoinductive properties, but due to their low mechanical strength and brittleness, they can easily cause stress shielding resulting in bone fixation failure. In this work, to make CF/PEEK bioactive while maintaining excellent mechanical properties, three bioactive glasses, namely, nonporous BGs, mesoporous BGs (MBG, pore size of 5-7 nm), and mesoporous BGs after surface treatment (Ca-MBG) by calcium chloride (CaCl
2), were selected and prepared with CF/PEEK to form BG-CF/PEEK, MBG-CF/PEEK and Ca-MBG-CF/PEEK three composites. The test results showed that the tensile strengths of BG-CF/PEEK, MBG-CF/PEEK, and Ca-MBG-CF/PEEK were 114.85 MPa, 111.34 MPa, and 92.45 MPa, respectively. The mechanical strength of CF/PEEK was not decreased by the prepared composites. Through hydroxyapatite formation experiments, the results showed that the samples with the addition of mesoporous BGs after surface treatment via CaCl
2 had the highest amount of bone-like deposits. Further in vitro bioactivity experiments by surface adhesion of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) showed that the addition of mesoporous BGs surface-treated with CaCl
2 also resulted in the highest number of surface-adherent cells, which significantly enhanced the bioactivity of CF/PEEK.