Porosity and Mechanical Properties of Porous Ti by Spark Plasma Sintering under Different Applied Produced Pressures

Porous Titanium (Ti) is one of the leading biomedical materials with high biocompatibility, durability, high stability, and non-toxic to the human body. In this study, highly porous Ti have been fabricated by spark plasma sintering process using NaCl as a pore former (70% wt.), and then, NaCl was dissolved in water. All the samples were sintered at 625 °C and held there for 10 min under applied pressure ranging from 20 to 50 MPa with heating rate of 100 °C/min in vacuum. The results suggested that NaCl is a proficient porogen, the porosity of all samples was in the range of 66.95 - 68.8%. When the pressing pressure increased from 20 - 50 MPa, the porosity of the samples decreased but the size of the pores increased. The pore size concentrated in the range of 300 - 350 µm. This implies that the compression pressure plays a crucial role in influencing both the porosity and pore size of the titanium material produced using the SPS technique. The compressive strength is 18.42 - 25.23 MPa, and the elastic modulus is 0.35 - 1.05 GPa, which matches the strength and the modulus of elasticity of biological implants.