Abstract
Ti–Ni microtubes are attractive materials for biomedical devices, such as micro-catheters and micro-stents, but it is difficult to fabricate them with dimensions of less than 100μm by conventional tube-drawing. In this study, Ti–Ni microtubes with 50μm inner diameter and a tube wall thickness of 6μm was successfully fabricated using a novel method in which Ti–Ni was sputter-deposited on a Cu wire with a diameter of 50μm. All the microtubes exhibited shape memory behavior after crystallization at 873K for 3.6ks. Microtubes fabricated without rotating the Cu wire during deposition have low fracture strength due to the columnar grains and non-uniform tube wall thickness. Microtubes fabricated by depositing Ti–Ni on a rotating wire have a uniform wall thickness and the fracture strength increased with increasing rotation speed. Microtubes made by the rotating-wire method exhibited superelasticity of 3% strain at room temperature with high fracture stress of 950MPa, suggesting that they are suitable for practical applications.
Published Version
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