Corrosion And Degradation Of Implant Materials

This book reviews the current understanding of the mechanical, chemical and biological processes that are responsible for the degradation of a variety of implant materials. All 18 chapters will be written by internationally renowned experts to address both fundamental and practical aspects of research into the field. Different failure mechanisms such as corrosion, fatigue, and wear will be reviewed, together with experimental techniques for monitoring them, either in vitro or in vivo. Procedures for implant retrieval and analysis will be presented. A variety of biomaterials (stainless steels, titanium and its alloys, nitinol, magnesium alloys, polyethylene, biodegradable polymers, silicone gel, hydrogels, calcium phosphates) and medical devices (orthopedic and dental implants, stents, heart valves, breast implants) will be analyzed in detail. The book will serve as a broad reference source for graduate students and researchers studying biomedicine, corrosion, surface science, and electrochemistry.

Despite their tremendous potential, Mg and its alloys are not yet used in biomedical applications. This book aims to provide scientific insights into the challenges of the materials, and give an overview of the research regarding their mechanical properties, corrosion behaviour and biological performances. The authors intend to put the reader into the position to accurate discern the proper Mg-based material for his/her applications and to choose the proper improvement strategy to his/her cause. To this aim, the manuscript is structured as follow: in Section 2, the main challenges hampering the use of magnesium in biomedical applications and the common improvement strategies are listed. In Section 3, the most investigated Mg alloys are reported in separate sub-sections, detailing their mechanical properties, corrosion behaviour and biotoxicity. High-pure and ultra-high-pure Mg, Al-based Mg alloys, Zn-based Mg alloys, Ca-based alloys and RE-based Mg alloys have been considered. In Section 4, the alloys’ performances with respect to the challenges is summarized providing the reader with useful information and suggestions on the potentially most suited choice. Finally, in Section 5, an outlook portraying the authors’ opinion of the future development of the field will be provided. This book will allow biomedical engineers, surface scientists, material scientists, implant manufacturers and companies working on implant approval an overview of the state-of-the-art technologies adopted so far to overcome the drawbacks of Mg for biomedical applications. Particular emphasis is put on explaining the link between mechanical, corrosion and biocompatible properties of Mg and its alloys as well as their pros and cons. In doing so, the authors intend to put the reader into the position to accurate discern the proper Mg-based material for his/her applications and to choose the proper improvement strategy to his/her cause.