Boosting the Anti-Infection Ability of Titanium Implants by Coating Polydopamine–Curcumin

To reduce the risk of infection, improving the anti-infection ability of Ti-based implantation has become a very meaningful task. In this work, by employing polydopamine (PDA) as a carrier and curcumin (CUR) as an anti-biotic/inflammatory, a series of Ti-PDA@CURx (x = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5) was successfully fabricated and characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and the water contact angle, where Ti plates were firmly coated by PDA@CUR. The test result of CUR content shows that the maximum loading of CUR in PDA can reach 0.6506%, where the CUR concentration is 1.5 mg/mL. The antibacterial test results demonstrate that Ti-PDA@CUR-x (x = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5) exhibit significant antibacterial activities against Escherichia coli and S. aureu, where Ti-PDA@CUR1.5 has the highest antibacterial rate of 62.7% against Escherichia coli and 52.6% against S. aureus. The cytotoxicity test shows that Ti-PDA, Ti-PDA@CUR-x (x = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5) has almost no toxicity.