Alkali and heat treatment of Ti6Al4V and its effect on bioactivity

Abstract

Titanium and its alloys have wide applications in biomedical devices and components, specifically as hard tissue replacements and in cardiac and cardiovascular applications, because this material has comparatively low modulus, good fatigue strength, low density, high strength to weight ratio, formability, machinability, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility.The present work has been carried out to study the formation of bone like apatite by alkali and heat treatment oflTi-6Al-4V alloy in the HANK solution. The study includes the formation of hydroxyapatite layer by changing the concentration of NaOH solution and heat treatment temperature. Different characterization techniques were used to study the chemical composition and surface morphology of the samples. XRD analysis was carried out to confirm the presence of hydroxyapatite layer. Vickers Hardness test was also carried out for all different samples. From the XRD analysis it was found that Ti-6Al-4V treated with 15 molar NaOH and subsequent heat treated at 600 o C shows the better formation of hydroxyapatite layer on the surface. It is evident from the result that the inducement ability of hydroxyapatite is maximum for alkali treated surface having 15 molar NaOH solutions.