Development of the titanium meshes by selective laser melting and chemical etching for using as medical implants

Abstract

The development of additive manufacturing technology has allowed to begin the implementation of the concept of personalized implants in medicine. Medical implants should have not only mechanical properties close to bone tissue, but also have good biocompatibility, antibacterial and osseointegrating properties. These characteristics are determined by the relief, morphology, and composition of surface and can be modified by various methods such as etching, coating, electrochemical and chemical modification etc. In this research we produced the mesh-type implants by selective laser melting (SLM) and modified their relief and morphology of surface by chemical etching. Titanium VT1-0 powder was used as a raw material for SLM. For chemical etching we used three type of solutions: mixtures of H2SO4/HCl, H2SO4/H2O2 and NH4OH/H2O2. The surface morphology of etched implants was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Results showed that NH4OH/H2O2 solution is the most promising for formation of the surface with developed relief.