Nanoceramics for Low Wear Orthopaedic Applications

Ceramics are becoming increasingly popular as implant materials in the biomedical engineering commupopularity arises from the fact that ceramics are inherently compatible with physiological environmeexpectation that ceramics may be engineered to minimize wear and distribute the stresses optimally odevelopments in materials engineering suggest that a novel form of ceramics -nanoceramics - has therealizing these expectations for orthopaedic applications. Nanoceramics are ceramics with microstrucnanometer scale. This microstructure has created the unprecedented opportunity of engineering the sttoughness, the wear properties, the porosity, and the formability of biomaterials. Furthermore, theproducts have novel properties useful for orthopaedic applications. This program seeks to develop, dcommercialize this unique potential of nanoceramics as orthopaedic biomaterials. Our technical approsynthesizing and processing nanoceramics by a proprietary process and then experimentally evaluatingbased implant materials for orthopaedic applications. We expect to establish the proof-of-concept dufocus will be alumina-based nanoceramics), optimize and extensively evaluate a wide range of nanocerorthopaedic biomaterials during Phase II. During Phase III we will commercialize nanoceramics-basedbiomaterials.