Modern personalised dental implants are being developed at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology and the National Taipei University of Technology. They will be created from 3D printed ceramic structures bonded to a metal core. By using biodegradable magnesium, bone tissue will be able to gradually grow into such an implant.
In the upper part (crown), the ceramic structure is solid, while the lower part (root) has a porous form. This allows it to be saturated with a liquid metal – a magnesium alloy. This will reduce the brittleness of the structure, and the core itself will initially act as an ‘anchor’, holding the implant in the jaw.
The joint efforts of the teams from Poland and Taiwan are enabled by funding from the National Research and Development Centre and MOST (The Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan) under the CERMET project. They will result in a composite implant that could potentially replace a human tooth.
