Methods for the physical and chemical characterisation of surfaces of titanium implants

At present, one is still searching for physical and chemical methods which are suitable for the characterisation of biocompatibility of implant surfaces. In this paper, we analysed differently structured titanium surfaces (the roughness average of the various structures differs by four orders of magnitude) with a number of electrochemical and physical methods such as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, chronoamperometry, linear sweep voltammetry, surface profiling and scanning electron microscopy. The aim of the work is to compare the specific methods regarding their significance, and to correlate the results. Beside the extraction of physical and electrochemical parameters which are typical for the above-mentioned methods, the possibility of the determination of the fractal dimension of the surface structures is also examined. Cell biological examinations concerning the mechanism of cell adhesion were used to verify the ability of the parameters measured by the referred methods to describe the biocompatibility of the analysed surfaces.