Surface modification and fatigue behavior of nitinol for load bearing implants

Sheldon A. Bernard

doi:10.7273/000006156

Musculoskeletal disorders are recognized amongst the most significant human health problems that exist today. Even though considerable research and development has gone towards understanding musculoskeletal disorders, there is still lack of bone replacement materials that are appropriate for restoring lost structures and functions, particularly for load-bearing applications. Many materials on the market today, such as titanium and stainless steel, suffer from significantly higher modulus than natural bone and low bioactivity leading to stress shielding and implant loosening over longer time use. Nitinol (NiTi) is an equiatomic intermetallic compound of nickel and titanium whose unique biomechanical and biological properties contributed to its increasing use as a biomaterial. An innovative method for creating dense and porous net shape NiTi alloy parts has been developed to improve biological properties while maintaining comparable or better mechanical properties than commercial materials that are currently in use. Laser engineered net shaping (LENS ) and surface electrochemistry modification was used to create dense/porous samples and micro textured surfaces on NiTi parts, respectively. Porous implants are known to promote cell adhesion and have a low elastic modulus, a combination that can significantly increase the life of an implant. However, porosity can significantly reduce the fatigue life of an implant, and very little work has been reported on the fatigue behavior of bulk porous metals, specifically on porous nitinol alloy. High-cycle rotating bending and compression-compression fatigue behavior of porous NiTi fabricated using LENS were studied. In cyclic compression loading, plastic strain increased with increasing porosity and it was evident that maximum strain was achieved during the first 50000 cycles and remained constant throughout the remaining loading. No failures were observed due to loading up to 150% of the yield strength. When subjected to rotary bending fatigue, samples demonstrated a high tolerance to failure, up to 50% of the yield stress. Using anodization, improvements to the surface wettability were made by lowering the contact angle from 32 to less than 5 , which prove to enhance the bioactivity of the nitinol surface in the cell study. The surface free energy was also calculated to show comparable properties to that of cpTi. Ni ion release was studied over a 8 week duration and found that anodization not only reduces the amount of metal ion release but also decreases the rate of release as well. This work was aimed at understanding the effects of porosity characteristics, microstructure, surface morphology and fatigue behavior of nitinol on its mechanical and biological properties.

Surface modification and fatigue behavior of nitinol for load bearing implants

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