ZrO₂ Ceramic Dental Implants: Antibacterial Behavior Without and With C₆₀ Films

Zirconia is known as a strong and bioinert load bearing material for dental implants. It usually exhibits no antibacterial activity. Inflammation is a crucial problem for dental implant surgery. About 3-5% of all dental implants experience inflammation. It is very central finding of the present study that fullerene C₆₀ films as well as a tribomechanical loading of zirconia without the fullerene C₆₀ topping can cause an improvement of antibacterial activity against gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus. The moderate antibacterial activity is especially important, because a strong antibacterial effect could disturb the sensitive oral bacterial flora and should be prevented. In the present study, different conditions of the fullerene C₆₀ film were provided. In addition to fullerene C₆₀ film in the “as deposited” condition, treatment in a nitrogen plasma as well as tribomechanical produced surface pattern without and with plasma post-treatment were testified. 85.8% reduction of gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus bacterial formation was measured on zirconia with fullerene C₆₀ film. Plasma treatment of the C₆₀ film effect an increase of the antibacterial impact of 72.2% only in comparison to zirconia without fullerene C₆₀ film. Also, tribomechanical loaded fullerene C₆₀ films suppress the growth of gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus. The tribomechanical loading seems to compensate the effect of a plasma treatment. ZrO₂ samples with fullerene C₆₀ film and tribomechanical loading achieve an increase of antibacterial impact of 83.36%. Furthermore, surprisingly yttria-stabilized zirconia bioceramic without fullerene C₆₀ film also shows a high antibacterial effectivity after a tribomechanical patterning procedure. Due to surficial patterning the ZrO₂ by scratching microgroove arrangements with a diamond tip, its antibacterial effect against gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus was increased 70.46%.