A variant of the cold spray (CS) technique was applied for the functionalization of polymer-based materials such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to improve the extent of mammalian cell interactions with these substrates. This was demonstrated by the embedment of porous titanium (pTi) into PDMS substrates using a single-step CS technique. CS processing parameters such as gas pressure and temperature were optimized to achieve the mechanical interlocking of pTi in the compressed PDMS to fabricate a unique hierarchical morphology possessing micro-roughness. As evidenced by the preserved porous structure, the pTi particles did not undergo any significant plastic deformation upon impact with the polymer substrate. The thickness of the particle embedment layer was determined, by cross-sectional analysis, ranging from 120 μm to over 200 μm. The behavior of osteoblast-like cells MG63 coming into contact with the pTi-embedded PDMS was examined. The results showed that the pTi-embedded PDMS samples promoted 80-96% of cell adhesion and proliferation during the early stages of incubation. The low cytotoxicity of the pTi-embedded PDMS was confirmed, with cell viability of the MG63 cells being above 90%. Furthermore, the pTi-embedded PDMS facilitated the production of alkaline phosphatase and calcium deposition in the MG63 cells, as demonstrated by the higher amount of alkaline phosphatase (2.6 times) and calcium (10.6 times) on the pTi-embedded PDMS sample fabricated at 250 °C, 3 MPa. Overall, the work demonstrated that the CS process provided flexibility in the parameters used for the production of the modified PDMS substrates and is highly efficient for the fabrication of coated polymer products. The results obtained in this study suggest that a tailorable porous and rough architecture could be achieved that promoted osteoblast function, indicating that the method has promise in the design of titanium-polymer composite materials applied to biomaterials used in musculoskeletal applications.
Keywords: PDMS; biomaterials; cold spray; osteogenic differentiation; porous titanium; surface modification.