Characterization of plasma sprayed yittria stabilized zirconia (8 wt %) hydroxyapatite coatings

Splitting problems at HA-coated implants are generally due to biological reasons. Bondcoatings were used to prevent the splitting problem of zirconia ceramics; this method can be widely seen in industrial applications. Two main groups were used; the first group consisted of spraying a bond layer of titania onto commercially pure titanium. This followed by a spray of HA with 5, 10 and 15 % zirconia (8 % yttria doped) as main layer onto the first bond-coating. For the second group, the samples were coated without bond-coating. Firstly, X-ray diffraction patterns of the starting powders were taken. Then x-ray diffraction patterns of the plasma sprayed samples were taken. In literature, it was seen that 20 % zirconia was sufficient for the transformation into a monoclinic structure for the bond-coated samples. For this study it was found that 10 % zirconia was sufficient to transform to the same structure of the desired crystalline phase transformation. The coating kept its crystal structure and relatively small amount of amorphous transformation was detected. A similar structure was produced using less zirconia. It was thought that the use of titanium-oxide bond-coating layer would play an important role as a third variable in the results. To further investigate these phenomena, more detailed researches must be conducted with using titanium-oxide yittria stabilized zirconia (8 wt %) hydroxyapatite bond-coatings with HA main coatings.