Abstract
In the field of surgery, bioresorbable magnesium is considered a promising candidate. Its low corrosion resistance, which is disadvantageous for technical application, is advantageous for surgery since the implant fully degrades in the presence of the water-based body fluids, and after a defined time the regenerating bone takes over its function again. Therefore, knowledge of the corrosion behavior over several months is essential. For this reason, an in vitro short-time testing method is developed to accelerate the corrosion progress by galvanostatic anodic polarization without influencing the macroscopic corrosion morphology. The initial corrosion rate of the magnesium alloy WE43 is calculated by detection of the hydrogen volume produced in an immersion test. In a corresponding experimental setup, a galvanostatic anodic polarization is applied with a three-electrode system. The application range for the polarization is determined based on the corrosion current density from potentiodynamic polarization. To correlate the initial corrosion rate, and accelerated dissolution rate, the corrosion morphologies of both test strategies are characterized by microscopy images, as well as energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. The results demonstrate that the dissolution rate can be increased in the order of decades with the limitation of a changed corrosion morphology with increasing polarization. With this approach, it is possible to characterize and exclude new unsuitable magnesium alloys in a time-efficient manner before they are used in subsequent preclinical studies.
Highlights
Accepted: 20 February 2021The element magnesium (Mg) is involved in many biochemical mechanisms of the human body, including wound healing, hard and soft tissue regeneration, as well as protein synthesis [1,2,3]
For alloy WE43, this is mainly favored by the accumulation of yttrium- and zirconium-rich precipitates [30]
The magnesium alloy WE43 was used to investigate the feasibility of galvanostatic anodic polarization for accelerating the corrosion process
Summary
Accepted: 20 February 2021The element magnesium (Mg) is involved in many biochemical mechanisms of the human body, including wound healing, hard and soft tissue regeneration, as well as protein synthesis [1,2,3]. Magnesium and its low corrosion resistance has proven to be of advantage since the implant fulfills its function over a defined period (functional phase) and fully degraded afterwards, making the usual implant removal with all its risks and costs obsolete [4,7]. For this application, exact knowledge of the duration of the functional phase must be provided so that the progressive reduction in mechanical stability does not lead to premature implant failure and thereby to a risk to human health [8].
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