Fabrication of Ti-6Al-4V porous scaffolds by sintering of spherical powder beads

Abstract

One of the most important application areas of porous materials is bioengineering. For this application, together with the appropriate material, the fabrication of a scaffold with defined and controlled pore size, shape and connectivity is of paramount importance for the proper tissue ingrowth and development, for instance in bone replacement. In this work, different Ti-6Al-4V porous scaffolds have been produced by vacuum sintering departing from spherical powders of selected size. Microstructural features found have been correlated to mechanical properties in order to analyse the suitability of such materials in biomedical applications. The best combination of powder beads and sintering parameters has been determined.