Influence of laser surface texturing on the wettability and antibacterial properties of metallic, ceramic, and polymeric surfaces

Laser surface texturing is a widely accepted technique to alter the surface properties of different biomaterials. The present work investigates the influence of texture shape and texture area fraction on the wettability and bacterial adhesion properties of a metallic (Ti–6Al–4V), ceramic (hydroxyapatite, HAp), and polymeric (polymethyl methacrylate, PMMA) surfaces. A fiber laser (1040 nm wavelength) was utilized to generate patterns on Ti–6Al–4V, whereas a CO2 laser (1062 nm wavelength) was employed for patterning HAp, and PMMA surface. The average surface roughness (~ 10 s of µm) of textured surfaces have elicited corresponding enhancement in the feature of base wettability. A decreased surface energy of textured surfaces commensurate with decreased E. coli bacterial density (~ 30.1% in HAp, and by 53.7% in PMMA) in contrast to that of untextured samples. From the comparative study conducted in this work, among all the textured samples the triangular patterned HAp having 50.6% textured area, contact angle and surface energy of 103.2 ± 3° and 15.1 mN.m−2, respectively, showcased a significant decrease in E. coli adhesion (~ 1.67 ± 0.15 × 105 bacteria per mm2). Thus, laser surface texturing of scaffolds can potentially allow restricting the bacterial adhesion on various biosurfaces for bone replacement applications.