Medical applications of titanium nitride -Tecvac

Bone tumours are all too frequently some of the most difficult conditions faced by orthopaedic surgeons. Though relatively uncommon in the whole population, these tumours tend to strike young children and adults. Without radical surgery these conditions can progress very rapidly, often with fatal consequences.

Custom-made implants

Implant pioneers Stanmore Implants Worldwide Ltd, (SIW); based on the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital campus in Stanmore, Middlesex, is a world leader in supplying the custom-made implants to replace bone removed in bone tumour surgery.

Fast design process

Stanmore Implants has developed very fast methods of creating designs for implants directly from X-rays and CT scans, manufacturing implants and delivering them for surgeons to replace bone sections. SIW can achieve very rapid turnaround times, often within four days, and sometimes overnight for urgent critical cases.

Biomedical integrity

While a variety of materials are used for implants, the most common material to replace bone structures is a titanium aluminium vanadium alloy. Tecvac provides some of SIW's titanium alloy implants with a titanium nitride coating to help ensure the mechanical, biocompatible and cosmetic integrity of the implants. While SIW provides around 900 custom-made devices every year, titanium nitride is normally only applied to the proximal tibial replacements, where it is particularly important to avoid tissue staining and have smooth interaction with surrounding tissue due to the close proximity of the tibia to the skin surface.

Diamond-like carbon coatings (DLC)
Tecvac has developed high integrity DLC coatings especially for knee and hip implants and other orthopaedic applications.

See the latest datasheet at www.cmprnews.co.uk/dlccompatibility.pdf

£500,000 EPSRC project at the University of Sheffield
Tecvac Ltd has designed and built a unique, world class surface engineering research machine for The University of Sheffield as part of a £500,000 EPSRC project.

Specifically designed for the Research Centre in Surface Engineering, led by Professor Allan Matthews (in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering) the new Tecvac IP70 machine uniquely combines two different Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) coating technologies in a single production scale vacuum chamber.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), it will be used both for fundamental research and for near-market applications in surface engineering, covering a range of ceramics, nano composite and glassy-metal plasma-based coatings - combined with a duplex substrate diffusion pre-treatment capability.
This will open up routes to new thin film and nano-scale processes which can support innovative medical and life science applications including tissue engineering.
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Project BERTI; (Biomedical implant with Exceptional Resistance to Tribo-bio-corrosion and with Inherent antimicrobial properties) is expected to lead to new designs of knee and hip implants and substantially reduce the number of costly revision surgeries for hip and knee replacement patients. Partners in the project include Corin Plc, Tecvac Ltd, Imperial College, University of London, Charing Cross Hospitals, Queen Mary College, University of London and the University of Sheffield.
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