Fabrication of biomedical Ti–35Nb–7Zr–5Ta alloys by mechanical alloying and spark plasma sintering

Abstract

Ti–35Nb–7Zr–5Ta biomedical alloys were fabricated by spark plasma sintering of nanocrystalline powders by mechanical alloying. After 60 h milling, mixtures of respective elemental powders transformed into a homogeneous structure of completed β-Ti solid solution. The grain size of the milled powder was ∼9 nm. Subsequently, the obtained nanosized grained powder was consolidated into bulk form by spark plasma sintering at different sintering parameters. At a sintering temperature of 1373 K, the fabricated bulk alloys reached nearly full density. The microstructure of the fabricated alloys was of hcp α-Ti regions surrounded by bcc β-Ti regions. In addition, fracture strengths, Young’s modulus and microhardness of the fabricated alloys were investigated to explore the potential adaptability of the fabricated alloys as human implant.

Keywords:

• Ti based biomedical alloy
• Spark plasma sintering
• Mechanical alloying

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (grant no. 2010CB635104), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 50801028), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant no. 2009ZM0320).