Fabrication of porous-Ti6Al4V alloy by using hot pressing technique and Mg space holder for hard-tissue biomedical applications

Porous-Ti6Al4V (P-Ti6Al4V) alloys were produced using the hot pressing and spacer methods for hard tissue biomedical applications and in particular, the effects of porosity on the mechanical and morphological properties of the structures were investigated. P-Ti6Al4V structures having the homogeneously distributed porosities at 41.08, 52.37 and 64.10% were fabricated by adding 40, 50 and 60% spherical magnesium (Mg) powder with 350 μm particle sizes in average as spacers and evaporating magnesium via the atmosphere-controlled sintering. The obtained porous structures were characterized by SEM, XRD and EDS. Furthermore, the strength and elastic modulus were evaluated by performing compression tests. Elastic modulus and densities were found to be 40–171 MPa, 2–5 GPa and 1.59–2.61, respectively and these values have been shown to decrease with an increase in porosity. The achieved density and mechanical property values, in particular, elastic modulus are close to human bone and within acceptable ranges for with biomedical application purposes. In addition, it was also found out from the analysis of produced P-Ti6Al4V that macropores were responsible for mechanical anisotropy contributed to formation of homogeneous and inter-connected open pores. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]