Pore Characteristics and Mechanical Behavior of spark plasma sintered porous Zn-Mg alloy for Biomedical Applications

Abstract:

In this study, porous Zn-xMg alloy scaffolds (x=5,10 and 15 wt.%) were fabricated as bone tissue engineering scaffold by spark plasma sintering (SPS) using same volume content space holder (NaCl). The effect of content of Mg on the mechanical properties, microstructural characterizations of the porous Zn-xMg alloys scaffold were revealed. Results showed that with increasing content of Mg, the porosity increased from 40.3% to 54.3% and the mean open pore size increased from 289 μm to 384 μm due to the dealloying effect of Mg. Mechanical tests results showed that porous Zn-Mg alloy was a typical elastic-brittle metallic foam and porous Zn-10Mg was best among three scaffolds. The strength and elastic module of the scaffolds showed good biomechanical compatibility and had the promising to be used as a lower load-bearing implant material.