Corrosion studies on porous titanium structures obtained through different manufacturing techniques

Abstract

Through the years, the medicine has been modernized to reach today a complex science complying diagnosis, treatments and prevention of illness. This project is focused on the orthopedic surgery and more particularly on medical implants. Medical implants are medical devices which are incorporated in the human body in order to support or replace a missing biological structure. The human body is fragile, and it is necessary to pay attention to the biocompatibility of the medical implants in order to avoid contamination or poisoning. This is why medical implants are mostly made, nowadays, in biocompatible materials such as ceramics, polymers or specific metal alloys as titanium alloys or Nickel alloys. These materials present good corrosion resistance or even are completely inert towards the human body. This project will be focused on titanium orthopedic implants. Titanium and its alloys present interesting properties as a high strength to density ratio, a good corrosion resistance due to the combination of the different surface-formed oxide layers and offer an excellent biocompatibility. This unique combination of properties makes them ideal materials for medical implants. However, titanium implants present issues regarding long-term performances due to a mismatch in mechanical properties between the implant and natural bone. These differences can enhance stress shielding effect. To avoid this mismatch, the solution is to adjust the mechanical properties of titanium so that they are as similar as possible to those of bone. This is achieved by the introduction of a sufficient amount of porosity. Indeed, by controlling the porosity, it is possible to tailor the mechanical properties of a solid material. In order to confer a superior bone-bonding property to titanium implants, attempts have been made to coat their surfaces with a thin layer of bone-bonding ceramic, such assodium titanate, by the means of chemical and heat treatments To avoid infection, caused by the introduction of a foreign body in human body, silver ions, known for their antibacterial activity, may be incorporated to the medical implant. Beside silver ions, Gallium ions also present good antibacterial activity but they're mostly known for their impact on bone resorption. The aim of this study is to produce comparative studies of corrosion resistance with different samples of titanium implants. Will be studied the impact of the heat treatment and the introduction of the antibacterial ions on the electrochemical behavior.