Electrochemical corrosion behavior and elasticity properties of Ti-6Al-xFe alloys for biomedical applications.

The present study is to investigate the microstructural characteristics, electrochemical corrosion behavior and elasticity properties of Ti-6Al-xFe alloys with Fe addition for biomedical application, and Ti-6Al-4V alloy with two-phase (α+β) microstructure is also studied as a comparison. Microstructural characterization reveals that the phase and crystal structure are sensitive to the Fe content. Ti-6Al alloy displays feather-like hexagonal α phase, and Ti-6Al-1Fe exhibits coarse lath structure of hexagonal α phase and a small amount of β phase. Ti-6Al-2Fe and Ti-6Al-4Fe alloys are dominated by elongated, equiaxed α phase and retained β phase, but the size of α phase particle in Ti-6Al-4Fe alloy is much smaller than that in Ti-6Al-2Fe alloy. The corrosion resistance of these alloys is determined in SBF solution at 37 °C. It is found that the alloys spontaneously form a passive oxide film on their surface after immersion for 500 s, and then they are stable for polarizations up to 0 VSCE. In comparison with Ti-6Al and Ti-6Al-4V alloys, Ti-6Al-xFe alloys exhibit better corrosion resistance with lower anodic current densities, larger polarization resistances and higher open-circuit potentials. The passive layers show stable characteristics, and the wide frequency ranges displaying capacitive characteristics occur for high iron contents. Elasticity experiments are performed to evaluate the elasticity property at room temperature. Ti-6Al-4Fe alloy has the lowest Young's modulus (112 GPa) and exhibits the highest strength/modulus ratios as large as 8.6, which is similar to that of c.p. Ti (8.5). These characteristics of Ti-6Al-xFe alloys form the basis of a great potential to be used as biomedical implantation materials.