Abstract
In Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr based β-titanium alloys intended for orthopedic applications, Zr does not affect the stability of low modulus β-phase, unlike Nb and Ta. The present study attempts to investigate the influence of Zr on the overall mechanical and functional responses of a Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr-O alloy in contrast to a new Ti-Nb-Ta-O alloy. In each material, different crystallographic textures were produced by varying the processing route. While both alloys were found to show low elastic modulus values due to their β-only microstructures, Ti-Nb-Ta-O alloy had lower elastic modulus because of its favorable crystallographic orientation caused by absence of Zr. The tensile strength values were remarkably high for both due to the presence of interstitial oxygen. The hardening effect of Zr was also evident from the higher strength of Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr-O as compared to Ti-Nb-Ta-O alloy. Although the corrosion resistance and in vitro biological behavior of the two alloys were satisfactory, the Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr-O alloy showed lower corrosion rate and improved osteoblast attachment than the Ti-Nb-Ta-O alloy. Thus, whereas the two alloys show promising performance in terms of their mechanical and functional response, presence of Zr marginally improves the performance in the Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr-O for orthopedic applications.
Highlights
Metallic materials are widely used to prepare implants for the replacement of structural body parts that bear loads
Unlike unidirectional rolling (UDR), where sample direction was kept constant throughout the process, the multi-step cross-rolling (MSCR) process consisted of rotation of the samples by 90° around the normal axis after each pass (Fig. 1)
TEM examinations were carried out on the solutionizing and quenching (STQ) samples to investigate the presence of these second phases undetected by X-ray diffraction
Summary
Metallic materials are widely used to prepare implants for the replacement of structural body parts that bear loads. Several Ti-Nb based compositions consisting of Ta, and Zr as additional alloying elements have been studied with maintaining this specific e/a ratio such as Ti-29Nb-13Ta4.6Zr [6,15,16], Ti–35Nb–8Zr–5Ta [17,18], Ti–29Nb–9Ta–10Zr [19] and Ti–35.9Nb–2Ta–2.7Zr–0.3O [7,20,21,22], etc. These alloying elements, in addition to reducing the modulus in β alloy, are found to be less cytotoxic than Al, V and Ni, etc. These newly emerging classes of alloys are considered as potential candidates for replacing the current materials in use for enhanced performance of the device
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