Romanian Biotechnological Letters Vol. 15, No.3, 2010, Supplement Copyright © 2010 University of Bucharest Printed in Romania. All rights reserved ORIGINAL PAPER 109 Nanostructured thin films for prosthetic dentistry applications Received for publication, April 6, 2010 Accepted, May 22, 2010 MADĂLINA PRODAN 1 , IULIANA STANESCU 1 , V. CIUPINA 1 , DOINA GHEORGHIU 2 , COMSA STANCA 2 , V. EUGENIU 3 , G. PRODAN 1 1 “Ovidius” University of Constanţa, Constanta, 900527, Romania 2 The National Institute of Research and Development in Mechatronics and Measurement Technique, Bucharest, 021591, Romania 3 Metav Research-Development Bucharest, 020011, Romania mprodan@univ-ovidius.ro Abstract Nanostructured carbon thin film has a large application in different working area. These work will present nanostructured carbon thin films obtained by TVA (Thermionic Vacuum Arc) method, with nanometric size (thickness < 100nm). The most important feature of these films is hardness given by sp2-sp3 ratio of films composition. Titan alloy are used frequently in biomedical application due to highly biocompatibility. The resulted prosthetic from these coated alloy, with high hardness carbon films, lead on substantial improvement quality, from mechanical point of view with about 100% related to other protection methods. TVA method allows a morphological smoothly DLC (diamond like carbon) type carbon films to obtain. The resulted DLC is thicker and has diamond properties, like: high hardness (3000-5000kg/mm 2 ), small friction coefficient (0,1-0,2), chemical inactive, abrasion hardness (1,6x10,9mm 3 /mN) and also electrical properties. Obtained films were studied by electron microscopy techniques (TEM, SEM, HRTEM, EELS, SAED and PED). PED (Precession of Electron Diffraction) method is recently developed and substantially improves the crystalline structure studies by means of electron diffraction patterns acquisition very close to kinematical condition. Also, the mechanical resistance was tested and compared for coated and uncoated alloys. The geometry of used sample is cylindrical with 100 mm length and 3 mm diameter. Dynamic tensile and bend tests were performed using method described by the SR EN 10002-1:2002 standard. Dynamic tensile test show increasing of sample length from 4 mm (uncoated sample) to approximately 6 mm for coated sample, and the maximum stress and bending momentum values gives that carbon coated samples are more elastic. Keywords: prosthetic dentistry, TVA, DLC, SAED Introduction For applications in medical devices, nanostructured materials have unique properties to interact with cells, proteins and human DNA. These materials are defined as materials containing structural elements (i.e. clusters, crystallites or molecules) with dimensions range from 1 to 100 nm. Recent advances in medical applications are the result of the development of two complementary phenomena. First, is a natural evolution from micro to nano scale as processing and characterization techniques become available. Second, the nanostructured materials allow specific protein interactions, DNA, viruses and other biological structures at the nano scale (HAN & al, [1]. Specific interactions between them and nanostructured materials can generate biological features that are not possible when using micro materials (PIELES & al, [2]. Field of nanostructured ceramic materials for medical applications are rapidly evolving. As biomedical applications, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics are major target market for suppliers of nanoparticles and nanotechnologies, in this stage we propose a description of different types of nanoparticles, including nanoparticles of ceramics, metals and alloys in the