Alternating Current Electrophoretic Deposition of Bovine Serum Albumin onto Magnesium

Abstract

Magnesium and magnesium alloys are gaining considerable attention for use in biomedical applications due to their capability to completely resorb in the human body without noticeable side effects. For structural biomedical applications however, the resorption rate is too large. In order to decrease this rate researchers are investigating magnesium alloys with an increased corrosion resistance and/or biodegradable coatings, such as dense protein layers, which retard the resorption.In this work, we demonstrate the electrophoretic deposition of Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) directly onto pure magnesium substrates using unbalanced alternating fields (AC-EPD). The effect of the obtained coatings on the corrosion behavior of the substrates was evaluated by potentiodynamic polarization. The results show that an albumin layer deposited by AC-EPD from a 50/50 ethanol/H2O medium significantly reduces the corrosion rate.