In vitro study on equal channel angular pressing AZ31 magnesium alloy with and without back pressure

The equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) technique with and without back pressure (BP) was introduced in this paper to prepare biomedical AZ31 magnesium alloy, with the effect of pass number (from 1 to 4) on the corrosion properties as well as in vitro biocompatibility being investigated. The results indicated that ECAPed or BP-ECAPed AZ31 alloys exhibited similar corrosion rate to that of the as-extruded one, but the corrosion rate slightly increased after 1–2 passes ECAP or BP-ECAP and further decreased after 4-pass procedure. Additionally, severe local corrosion was observed for the 1–3 passes ECAPed or BP-ECAPed AZ31 alloy samples. Compared to the as-extruded AZ31 alloy, the samples after ECAP or BP-ECAP procedure showed much smaller sized corrosion pits on the surface after removing the corrosion product. The surface analysis after 20 days immersion in Hank's solution revealed that the composition of the corrosion product consisted of C, O, Mg, P, Ca whereas only weak signal of Mg(OH)2 could be detected beside the dominant α(Mg) peak by X-ray diffraction. The cytotoxicity results suggested that the multi-pass ECAPed or BP-ECAPed AZ31 alloy exhibited Grade I–II cytotoxicity according to ISO 10993-5: 1999.