IHI Ionbond

Ionbond – IHI Group provides advanced coating solutions featuring a broad range of hard, low friction, wear resistant coatings based on PVD, PACVD and CVD technologies for aerospace, medical, food contact, automotive, decorative and tooling applications. With 35 job coating centers in 15 countries in Europe, North America and Asia, Ionbond has one of the largest coating networks in the world.

Medthin™ coatings for most demanding medical applications

Our thin-film Medthin™ coatings were designed with medical applications in mind, at the Ionbond medical competence centre in Switzerland. These biocompatible coatings are to be applied onto demanding medical devices, providing increase product lifetime and reduce adverse patient reactions. This is achieved by low wear, low ion release, textured surfaces and low light reflection. Properties not possible to achieve with any other bulk material or surface treatment.

Coatings for orthopedic and spine implants

To support long intended lifetimes of orthopaedic and spine implants, our coatings provide the surface properties to support that goal and to cause no harmful effects for their recipient. Anti-allergy: For patients which are sensitive to metal, Medthin™ coatings reduce allergic reactions caused by metal ion release.

Our biocompatible Medthin™ coatings reduce allergic reactions caused by metal ion release by inhibiting 98% of Co or Ni ions released by implants.

Wear reduction: Medthin™ coatings reduce wear and friction between articulating surfaces of implants by up to 70%. This results in less debris from UHMWPE decreasing, thus, the probability of debris-associated-inflammation and consequent implant revision.

Coatings for surgical and dental instruments

The significant extension of instrument and tool lifetime make Medthin™ coatings an investment in cost efficiency and sustainability. The coating process is done in large vacuum chambers, which allows to fit in high quantities of instruments and tools at a very attractive price.

Medthin™ coatings for surgical and dental instruments and tools improve performance in bone cutting, inhibits bacterial proliferation/colonization, decrease light reflection by 70%, provides scratch resistance by high hardness, a low friction and anti-galling as well as dielectric properties of DLC and SiOx and color coding for surgical instruments.

Coatings for trauma plates, screws and tapers

Micromovements between two metal components can lead to fretting corrosion such as in the case of screws, trauma plates and tapers. Medthin™ coatings on trauma implants help preventing micromotion issues. Medthin™ coatings are Anti-galling and prevent cold welding to occur. They avoid fretting corrosion, low friction and reduce ion release. Furthermore, they are available in different colors: TiN, ZrN, SiN, DLC.

In the presence of corrosive body fluids, Micromovements in the range of <250 µm remove the passive oxide film on titanium and stainless-steel com ponents. This leads to ion release from the implants, fretting corrosion and, in severe cases, generation of large quantities of oxidized metallic wear debris. Coatings patented by Ionbond such as Generation II Medthin™ 01 TiN or Generation III Medthin™ 42 DLC and Medthin™ 53 SiN help prevent these issues and increase significantly the lifetime and acceptance of coated products.

Coatings for cardiovascular devices

Medthin™ 43 ADLC, a dense carbon-based coating, is ideal for coating of implantable cardiovascular components like pacemakers, coronary stents, heart valves, annuloplasty rings and guidewires. The coatings provide properties that help increase the lifetime of the cardiovascular devices and reduce the chance of patients needing further surgery.

By lower adsorption of high-molecular-weight proteins onto materials coated with Medthin™ 43 ADLC, we achieve Hemocompatibility. Additionally, we gain lower blood thrombus deposition on ADLC, compared to Ti surfaces. The ion release reducing and low-friction Medthin™ 43 ADLC coating facilitates insertion of catheters by providing coated guiding wires with excellent sliding properties and is also applied on complex components for arterial repair, cardiac valves and coronary. Furthermore, our Medthin™ 43 ADLC coating has a US master file: MAF 1647.