Self-adjustment of Young's modulus in biomedical titanium alloys during orthopaedic operation

Abstract

In spinal fixation devices, the Young's modulus of the metallic implant rod should be not only sufficiently low to prevent stress shielding for the patient but also sufficiently high to suppress springback for the surgeon. This paper proposes a novel function of biomedical titanium alloys—self-adjustment of Young's modulus. Deformation-induced ω phase transformation was introduced into β-type titanium alloys so that the Young's modulus of only the deformed part would increase during operation, while that of the non-deformed part would remain low. The Young's modulus increase by deformation was investigated for a binary Ti-12Cr alloy. This alloy successfully underwent deformation-induced ω phase transformation and exhibited the increase in the Young's modulus by deformation.