In vitro studying corrosion behavior of porous titanium coating in dynamic electrolyte

Porous titanium (PT) is considered as a promising biomaterials for orthopedic implants. Besides biocompatibility and mechanical properties, corrosion resistance in physiological environment is the other important factor affecting the long stability of an implant. In order to investigate the corrosion behavior of porous titanium implants in a dynamic physiological environment, a dynamic circle system was designed in this study. Then a titanium-based implant with PT coating was fabricated by plasma spraying. The corrosion resistance of PT samples in flowing 0.9% NaCl solution was evaluated by electrochemical measurements. Commercial pure solid titanium (ST) disc was used as a control. The studies of potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) show that the pores in the PT play a negetive part in corrosion resistance and the flowing electrolyte can increase the corrosive rate of all titanium samples. The results suggest that pore design of titanium implants should pay attention to the effect of dynamic process of a physiological environment on the corrosion behavior of implants.