Feasibility of Ti-based metallic glass coating in biomedical applications

Conventional biomaterials have been used in a wide range of application in our life for centuries. Medical devices and artificial parts of human body are the most important of them. Among of all biomaterial family replaceable biomaterials with hard tissue have a longer history. They must place for long time in human body instead of damaged tissue without their properties will dwindle. In fact they should be used permanently and replacing them needs to re-surgery and different side effects for patients. Therefore, rejection probability in their application must be minimized. Bulk metallic glass alloys have been propounded seriously for 50 years, however they can not be used in large scale and with high thickness in industrial applications because of technical problems and high production coast reasons, but using MG alloys as coat could be economical and practicable. In this research a new amorphous biomaterial was introduced in coating form. This new biocoating with chemical formula Ti₆₄Cu₁₂Zr₁₁Co₅(Mo,Nb) was deposited by a pulse laser deposition technique that applied target is nonamorphous. By controlling process conditions such as laser power, amorphicity was maximized and coating was fully metallic glass. Achieved hardness from this coating is (570-600 HV) that was measured by micro hardness machine from achieved coating surface. This coating had no allergic effect or elements in its composition. The cytoxicity evaluations such as acute toxicity and MTT tests provide evidence that this coat doesn´t have any toxic effect and could be candidate medical and dental applications.