Natural Polysaccharide-Based Coatings with Solid Antibacterial Particles for Titanium or Its Alloys

Natural biopolymers, polysaccharides, and proteins have gained great interest in biomedical engineering in recent years because of a number of interesting properties, such as biocompatibility, non-toxicity, biodegradability, and antibacterial activity. Within the group of polysaccharides, the most explored are chitosan and alginate. They are widely used as basic coating materials for titanium and its alloys to impart specific properties associated with potential applications in the human body environment. The antibacterial properties of such coatings are particularly important from the point of view of implantology because bacterial infections are one of the main causes of long-term failures of titanium implants. Therefore, a common approach is to incorporate antibacterial compounds that are active against various bacteria strains into polysaccharides to enhance the bactericidal or bacteriostatic activity of coatings. This chapter presents an overview of the selected polysaccharide-based coatings, chitosan and alginate, with solid antibacterial components, mainly inorganic particles and antibiotics, developed by electrophoretic deposition for titanium-based implants.