Biocompatibility Evaluation of Piezoelectric Materials through Cytotoxicity Test

Abstract

Biocompatible piezoelectric materials are becoming increasingly important for actuators and sensors in medical devices. In this paper, we highlighted on some perovskite-type oxides MgSiO₃, CaSiO₃ and CaTiO₃ of biocompatible piezoelectric materials discovered by first-principles calculation in our previous studies. In order to verify their biocompatibility, the cytotoxicity of similar oxides with the same components was examined as comparing with typical perovskite-type oxides Pb(Zr, Ti)O₃ and BaTiO₃. The fibroblast (L929) cells were cultured during 7days and the effect of materials was evaluated by relative proliferation ratio and doubling time. As a result, it was recognized that MgSiO₃ and CaTiO₃ has the higher biocompatibility. On the other hand, CaSiO₃ and Pb(Zr, Ti)O₃ shows the strong toxicity and they can't be applied to medical devices.