Titanium powder sintering for preparation of a porous functionally graded material destined for orthopaedic implants

This work focuses on basic research into a P/M processed, porous-surfaced and functionally graded material (FGM) destined for a permanent skeletal replacement implant with improved structural compatibility. Based on a perpendicular gradient in porosity the Young's modulus of the material is adapted to the elastic properties of bone in order to prevent stress shielding effects and to provide better long-term performance of the implant-bone system. Using coarse Ti particle fractions the sintering process was accelerated by silicon-assisted liquid-phase sintering (LPS) resulting in a substantial improvement of the neck geometry. A novel evaluation for the strength of the sinter contacts was proposed. The Young's modulus of uniform non-graded stacks ranged from 5 to 80 GPa as determined by ultrasound velocity measurements. Thus, the typical range for cortical bone (10-29 GPa) was covered. The magnitude of the Poisson's ratio proved to be distinctly dependent on the porosity. Specimens with porosity gradients were successfully fabricated and characterized using quantitative description of the microstructural geometry and acoustic microscopy. (C) 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.