DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF POROUS TiMoZr ALLOY

Abstract

Titanium and its alloys have been widely used in the biomedical industry due to their attractive set of mechanical properties and biocompatibility. Beta-Ti alloys are more desirable due to their inherent lower young’s modulus which reduces or eliminates the phenomenon of stress-shielding, whereby natural bone loses its strength by resorption, due to implantation of stiffer material beside it. Therefore, it is necessary for such a material to be synthesized which exhibits stiffness equal or close to that of the natural bone. One way of reducing the young’s modulus of an alloy is to introduce porosity. In this project, we are focused on the modification of the ternary alloy system of Titanium-Molybdenum Zirconium to produce a bio-implant that has optimum mechanical properties. The young’s modulus is lowered by introducing porosity into the alloy by selective dealloying. A specific filler is added to the alloy composition in an increasing quantity, from TMZ5 to TMZ25 (increments of 5), to find the optimum percentage of filler required. Characterization of the alloy prior to and after dealloying is done by X-ray Diffraction Technique, Scanning Electron Microscopy, and results are compared. XRD and SEM results show that efficient distribution of filler material is achieved with subsequent efficient distribution of porosity within the alloy