Biomedical Behavior and Biocompatibility of Diamond-like-Carbon (DLC) Films

Diamond-like-carbon (DLC) is an attractive biomedical material due to its high inertness and excellent mechanical properties. It is being used in many biomedical applications such as blood contacting-devices including rotary blood pumps, mechanical heart valves. coronary artery stents, and heart valve replacements. Using plasma-based technology such as plasma implantation and deposition, various types of DLC and doped DLC films under different conditions have been produced. The properties of the films are affected by the implantation and deposition parameters such as precursors flow rate, bias voltage, temperature and do pant element and concentration. The film characteristics and structures have been investigated and have been correlated to the in vitro hemocompatibilty and biomedical behaviors. The composition, sp³/sp² ratio, surface morphology, surface energy. electrical and semiconductor properties of the DLC and doped DLC films have been studied and used to interpret the biocompatible mechanism such as the adhesion, activation. and morphology of the platelets as well as anticoagulation properties.