Feasibility Study on the Application of Ti-Zr Alloys for Fabrication of Porous Ti-based Biometals via Powder Metallurgy

Biometals for medical implants are required to have both low stiffness and high strength, and porous titanium(Ti) is expected for such biometals. Although porous Ti exhibits low stiffness, its application to the implants may be limited because of low strength. Improvement of the strength of porous biometals could be achieved by strengthening their scaffold metals. In this study, the feasibility of using Ti-Zr alloys as a scaffold material for porous biometals is investigated. Ti and Zr powders mixed in various volume fractions are simultaneously sintered by spark plasma sintering. As a result, the Ti-25Zr alloy exhibits the highest bending strength in the fabricated Ti-Zr alloys including pure Ti, indicating that the Ti-25Zr alloy is suitable as a scaffold of porous biometal.