Abstract
More than one-third of the global population suffers from dental defects, with osseointegrated implants being the gold-standard intervention; yet, their long-term functional performance is hindered by peri-implantitis. Here, we present an autonomous piezoelectric implant that delivers adaptive antibacterial and anti-inflammatory functionalities through physiological occlusal activation without any external intervention. The implant demonstrates good functional durability, sustaining consistent bioelectric outputs through over 1,000,000 loading-unloading cycles and exhibiting stable electrical performance in simulated physiological environments for over 30 days. Besides, integration with machine learning enables reliable, patient-specific prediction and real-time modulation of occlusal mechano-adaptive voltage responses. The autonomous implant achieves tri-modal therapeutic integration: (ⅰ) electrocatalytic bactericidal activity via controlled reactive oxygen species generation, (ⅱ) electrically induced immunomodulation of macrophages from pro- to anti-inflammatory phenotypes, and (ⅲ) electrostimulation-enhanced osteogenesis surpassing conventional titanium alloys, both in vitro and in vivo. These findings provide insights for occlusion-activated effective peri-implantitis intervention and a widely applicable strategy for developing autonomous and adaptable bioelectronic platforms.
Data availability
The authors declare that all data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its Supplementary Information, and source data are provided with this paper. The RNA-seq raw sequence reads data generated in this study have been deposited in the NCBI BioProject database under accession code PRJNA1426728. Correspondence and requests for additional information should be addressed to the corresponding authors jianlu@cityu.edu.hk (J. Lu). Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (JCYJ20220818101204010, J.L.), the RGC General Research Fund (No. AoE/M-402/20, J.L.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52205363, A.C.; 12302157, H.C.; and 52235008, C.Y.), the Program for Innovative Research Team of the Ministry of Education (IRT1244, C.Y.), the Key Research and Development Program of Hubei Province (2025BCB003, Z.Z.), the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province of China (2024AFB918, J.S.), and the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission via the Hong Kong Branch of National Precious Metals Material Engineering Research Center. The authors thank the technical support from the Experiment Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Technology in the School of Mechanical Science &Engineering of HUST. The authors would also like to thank Professor Liam Grover at the University of Birmingham for his kind assistance with language polishing and terminology refinement, which helped improve the overall quality of the manuscript.
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Y.S., J.L., C.Y., and Z.Z. conceived the idea and designed the research. A.C. and Y.L. performed the synthesis of BCZT powder and the printing of dental implants. A.C. performed morphology and structure characterizations of dental implants. A.C., Y.L., and J.S. carried out mechanical and piezoelectric characterizations. Y.L. and H.C. simulated the potential and electric displacement vector. C.F. conducted machine learning modeling and related data processing. K.L., Z.Z., and Y.S. performed the in vitro experiments. K.L. and Z.Z. performed the in vivo experiments. A.C. and K.L. analyzed the data and drafted the article. K.L., Y.S., Z.Z., C.Y., and J.L. made critical revisions to the article. All authors reviewed and commented on the manuscript.
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Chen, A., Li, K., Li, Y. et al. Occlusion-activated autonomous piezoelectric implants for adaptive prevention of peri-implantitis. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71556-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71556-z
