Understanding the materials that are on the surface of an implant is just as important, if not more important, than analyzing materials well below the surface. It’s actually the outer 10 Å that interact with the body, according to Lawrence Salvati, director of materials and biointerface research at DePuy Orthopaedics (Warsaw, IN). Salvati is the chair for the panel session “Analytical Methods for Surfaces,” which will take place on Thursday, May 13, during the OrthoTec show. 

Larry Salvati is the chair of a conference session about surface analysis.

"We feel it’s very important that manufacturers, developers, and companies do more to understand the surfaces of materials, because the surface is almost always—in more than 90% of the cases—different than the bulk,” says Salvati. The concern with surface analysis methods such as scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive x-ray analysis, and Fourier-transform infrared is that they’re not truly surface sensitive. These techniques analyze materials well below the surface. And although ISO 10993 discusses biocompatibility and testing, Salvati says it falls far short of recommending methods that actually look at surfaces.

The conference session will introduce attendees to more surface-oriented and novel techniques in an effort to inspire them beyond the methods that they currently use. The panelists include John Newman, director of analytical services at Evans Analytical Group; Dehua Yang, president of Ebatco; and Keith McCrea, chief technology officer at Emergence Venture Partners. Since the session will cross all borders of relevance, Salvati says it will have significance for professionals in engineering, R&D, and regulatory fields.

The experts will discuss techniques such as x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, and how these methods can see materials beyond other analysis methods. They will also shed some light on less-accessible technology such as sum frequency generation and newer methods such as nanoindentation.

The session will emphasize the importance of the surface in finding the success or failure of medical devices, and the importance of using new surface-sensitive methods to gather that information. “If you don’t look, you won’t see it,” says Salvati. “And if you don’t see it, you may not be able to have the best device possible."