Reduction of bacterial adhesion on ion-implanted stainless steel surfaces

The high incidence of infections caused by the use of biomedical devices has a severe impact on human health. An approach to reduce the complications is to modify the surface properties of biomedical devices. In this paper, stainless steel disks were implanted with N+, O+ and SiF3+, respectively, by an ion implantation technique. The surface properties of the ion-implanted surfaces were characterized, including their surface chemical composition, roughness, topography, wettability and surface energy. Bacterial adhesion of Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus, which frequently cause medical device-associated infections was evaluated. The experimental results showed that these implanted stainless steels, particularly SiF3+ implanted stainless steel performed much better than untreated stainless steel control on reducing bacterial attachment.