Corrosion behaviour of polished and sandblasted titanium alloys in PBS solution

In this work, we performed comparative studies of the effect of surface preparation of Ti6Al4V and Ti6Al7Nb biomedical alloys and the influence of endothelial cells on their corrosion behaviour in PBS (Phosphate Buffered Saline). Two different methods of surface modification were applied – polishing and sandblasting. The polished Ti6Al7Nb alloy was found to have the best resistance against general corrosion in PBS. It was characterized by the lowest corrosion rate, the widest passive range and the lowest reactivity. Both alloys prepared by sandblasting exhibited worse corrosion properties in comparison to the polished ones. This can be associated with a greater development of their surface and the presence of Al2O3 grains which caused an increase of corrosion potential but might also influence the weakening of the passive layer. Results of potentiodynamic anodic polarization indicated that more resistant to pitting corrosion was Ti6Al7Nb alloy regardless of the method of surface preparation. In those cases, anodic polarization caused only an increase of passive layer, while in the case of sandblasted Ti6Al4V alloy it caused a pitting corrosion. The results obtained allowed us to conclude that the niobium-titanium alloys had higher corrosion resistance than titanium alloys with vanadium. Moreover, it was stated that endothelial cells improved the corrosion resistance of all the titanium alloys examined.