Tailored Composite Titanium-Based Biomaterials

摘要

Medical devices, implants and biomaterials must all keep in step with advances in medicine. For special applications biomaterials must often be tailor made if one single material is not able to fulfill the various requirements. Therefore composite materials must be developed if special properties are required. Due to their corrosion resistance, biocompatibility and bioadesion, titanium and its alloys are the metallic biomaterials of preference for use as structural components. Two examples are given for composite materials, i.e. functional layers on titanium and its alloys: 1. Improving the electrical conductivity of the surface of heart pacemaker leads consisting of porous sintered titanium by coating with TiN, TiB_2 and Ir respectively. 2. Development of a near β-alloy which has a reduced Young's modulus for a good load transfer and, in addition, due to an adapted thermal expansion coefficient, can be coated with hydroxyapatite (HA) possessing a high adhesion strength to the substrate.