Enhancing the wettability of pure titanium by shot peening for implant applications

Abstract

Metals are widely used for load bearing applications in manufacturing bone fixing implants in the biomedical engineering. Compared with polymers and ceramic materials, metals are suitable for load bearing applications in medical industry. Among the available metals, titanium based implants have become promising for load bearing implant applications. However, titanium suffers from bio-inert nature. The bioactivity of titanium surface can be improved by enhancing the wettability of the surface. Refining the microstructure at the surface of the implant increases the surface energy and improves the wettability. In the present work, pure titanium sheets were processed by implants can be or load bes applications. Horing implant for load beteels, alloys of cobalt and titanium are commonly used in the orthopedic peening by using steels balls of diameter 2 mm. The microstructure at the surface was observed as refined up to 100 μm. Microhardness of processed titanium was measured as increased up to 30% compared with base material. Lower water contact angles were observed for the processed titanium which suggests increased wettability after shot peening due to smaller grain size.