Wear Properties of Three Dimensional Porous NiTi Shape Memory Scaffold for Orthopaedic Implants

Abstract

Porous NiTi scaffolds are exhibiting potent capacity as orthopedic implants because of their porous structure and metal nature endow them better mechanical properties and similar Young’s modulus to nature bone. Besides the porous structure allowing the tissue ingrowth, as well as the transfer of nutrition and mass, this alloy possesses unique and excellent superelastitic properties compatible to natural hard tissues like bone and tendon, which favor the fast osseointegration [1]. However, the abraded debris might cause osteocyticosteolysis on the interface between implants and bone tissues, thus inducing the subsequent mobilization of implants gradually, and finally resulting in the failure of bone implants. In this work, we focus on the wear properties of porous NiTi with different porosities and various heat treatment temperatures. Results show that the phase transformation temperature and porosities influence the wear characteristics of porous NiTi shape memory alloy substantially.

Keywords:  Wear characteristics; NiTi; Scaffold; Porosity; Phase transformation