Graduation date: 2005

Thesis (MTech (Biomedical Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Metallic materials play an essential role in assisting with the repair or replacement of bone tissue that has become diseased or damaged. Metals are more suitable for load bearing applications compared to ceramics or polymeric materials due to high mechanical strength and fracture toughness that are exhibited by metallic materials. However, the main limitation in the application of these metallic materials is the release of the toxic metallic ions. The release of these ions is caused by the interaction of metallic materials with human body fluids. These ions react with body tissue, which might lead to various adverse tissue reactions and/or hypersensitivity reactions. Cobalt-chromium-molybdenum (Co-Cr-Mo) alloys are one of the most useful alloys for biomedical applications such as dental and orthopedic implants because of acceptable mechanical properties and biocompatibility. However, the use of these alloys in biomedical applications has of late come under scrutiny recently due to unacceptable revision rates of applications such as hip resurfacing and total hip arthroplasty designs. Failure analysis has demonstrated that solid and soluble wear debris and corrosion products resulted. This release of ions from the joints has resulted in adverse local tissue reactions. Laser-aided deposition is a material additive based manufacturing process via metallurgically bonding the deposited material to the substrate. Due to its capability to bond various materials together, it became an attractive technology. The principal aims of this study were to 1a) fabricate nanocomposite materials by depositing fluorapatite nanopowder onto the Co-Cr-Mo dental alloy using pulsed laser deposition and 1b) evaluate which laser beam energy and layer thickness, based on the exposure time period, would be applicable, and 2) evaluate bioactivity properties on biological material.

Nanoalloys are an exciting new class of materials in the growing field of nanotechnology. Nanoalloys consist of the nanoscale co-aggregation of two or more metals with a potential to form compositionally-ordered phases or superstructures that have properties unlike those of the individual metal clusters or of bulk alloys of the constituent metals. This research seizes the opportunity that the nanoscale domain has to offer, and focuses on the synthesis of iron and cobalt nanoalloys via the simultaneous decomposition of iron cobalt organometallic precursors in a stabilizing environment, accompanied by the thorough characterization of the resulting nanoclusters. Zero-valent FeCo nanoalloys may potentially have interesting uses as magnetic materials. Since these clusters have sizes less than the size of their magnetic domain, the clusters will exhibit single domain magnetism. This magnetism may be observed by the presence of chain structures of FeCo nanoclusters due to the alignment of their single magnetic domains. In order to create a near-atomically homogeneous nanoalloy without preferential aggregation of its metal atom constituents, no clustering and phase separation should take place. In the bulk, alloys of iron and cobalt phase separate over most of the compositional range. Conversely, at the nanoscale, it may be possible to synthesize nanoalloy structures that are not normally favorable at given compositions, by the manipulation of reaction kinetics. In order to produce an atomically mixed nanoalloy, the transformation reactions of the organometallic precursors should display similar kinetic features, i.e. similar reaction rates. Therefore, the reaction kinetics of all the species in the reaction must be similar to avoid competition between them. As a result, kinetic control of the individual transformation reaction rates of each species may be used to modulate the aggregation and phase separation of the different species, and consequently control cluster morphology. This work has provided the framework for the design of synthesis methods that enable the control of the structure of FeCo nanoalloys with careful attention to precursor decomposition kinetics and the correlation between reaction kinetics and nanoalloy morphology.