Surface treatment of screw shaped titanium dental implants by high intensity laser pulses

Machined and Al2O3 blasted surfaces of screw shaped Ti dental implants were irradiated by 30 ns pulses of Nd:glass laser at 1064 nm wavelength with 0.5-3 J pulse energy. The laser treatment increased the temperature of the Ti surface well above the melting temperature. The resulting ablation of some surface layers was followed by a very rapid solidification. These thermal processes strongly modified the original morphology of the surface and removed the contaminations. The new morphology was characterized by features mostly in ten micron and partly in submicron ranges, The surface composition was the same as the bulk titanium without any segregation. Animal experiments demonstrated that this surface treatment seems to be promising for the improvement of the osseointegration of dental implants. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.