Laser-modified surface
Also known as: Laser-ablated surface, Laser-textured surface, Laser microtexturing, Laser microgrooved surface
An implant or abutment surface textured by laser ablation, which removes material in a controlled, repeating pattern rather than by the random action of blasting or etching.
Research in progress. Some fields on this entry are not yet verified against a primary source, so we have left them blank rather than filling them in — and this page is not published to search engines until they are.
Key facts
| Production process | BioHorizons, the manufacturer most associated with the approach, describes its laser-modified surface as "a series of cell-sized circumferential channels that are precisely created using proprietary laser ablation technology", and states that the microstructure also includes a repeating nanostructure.Manufacturer-reported[1] |
|---|---|
| Topography | Manufacturer documentation not located(Third-party summaries commonly quote channel widths of 8-12 micrometres. The BioHorizons documents we read describe the channels only as "cell-sized", so we do not state a figure.) |
| Surface roughness | Insufficient evidence(Laser texturing is characterised by pattern regularity and channel geometry rather than by an average roughness value, and we have not attached a source giving Sa figures.) |
| Geographic availability | Requires manual verification(We have verified one commercial implementation (BioHorizons Laser-Lok) and have not established which other manufacturers currently use laser texturing.) |
Overview
Laser texturing differs from every other surface treatment in one respect that its proponents consider decisive: the pattern is deliberate. Blasting and etching produce a surface that is statistically rough but locally unpredictable, so a cell landing on it meets a different geometry depending on where it lands. A laser cuts channels of a chosen width in a chosen spacing, everywhere, which in principle allows the surface to be tuned to the size of the cells intended to occupy it. In practice the technique is applied to a narrow band at the implant collar rather than the whole fixture, and the claims made for it are about soft tissue and crestal bone rather than about speed of osseointegration. This record is kept database-only because we have verified the process description but not the dimensional specifications, and because one manufacturer’s product currently defines the whole category.
Sources
Numbers match the citations beside each claim above.
Primary sources
- [1]Laser-Lok microchannels — clinical overview — BioHorizons Implant Systems, Inc.. Accessed 2026-07-21.