Preliminary studies of creation of gold nanoparticles on titanium surface towards biomedical applications

•Combined method for the formation of gold nanoparticles on Ti surface is presented.•Ion implantation and magnetron sputtering were used for creation of Au nanoparticles.•It was shown that implantation can improve the stability of the resulting structure.

This paper is devoted to present the results of creation of gold nanoparticles on titanium surface. We focused on the problem how to create gold nanoparticles on the titanium surface with defined particle size and distribution, which could be interesting for several applications (e.g. providing well-defined substrates for biomedical research, etc.). To do that the sample is affected by the complex physical rout of gold nanoparticles formation: by gold ion implantation, thin Au layer deposition and thermal annealing. The effect of the technology, influence on the surface structure and its parameters were investigated by the X-ray diffraction, Scanning Electron and Atomic Force Microscopy, as well as by Secondary Neutral Mass Spectrometry methods.