Nanoscale structural investigation on Ti-6Al-4V implants produced by using selective laser melting technique: The importance of production angle

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is a powerful technique that enables us to produce complex shapes of implants customized for patients. Besides, all of the physicochemical effects on the structure of metal alloy implants must be taken under the control during the production such as polydispersity of the nanostructured morphologies inside of the incident metal alloy powders, orientation of the samples according to the growth axis, production temperature, the cooling methods of the produced implants, etc. In the present study, first case Small Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAXS) method was used on Ti-6Al-4V implants (produced by SLM technique) to nanostructurally investigate the orientation effect. Structural controls and characterizations leads more successful implant production related with nanoscale nucleations, grain aggregations and uniform distributions. So, the biophysical and biochemical properties of high corrosion resistive Ti-6Al-4V alloy implants would be able to be developed. Initially the samples were examined by using SAXS, SEM-EDX techniques. An inside vision was tried to be gathered by calculating pair distance distribution functions (PDDF) and electron density distributions (EDD). Analyzes showed that the orientation angles, except for 0° and 90°, lead to rough surface production, there were no impurities in the structures sourced by previously used nanopowders like cobalt or chrome beside of Ti-6Al-4V in the production system and the angles other than 0° and 90° increase the particle size but cause more homogenous structures. The best production angle was determined as 50° which lead to more uniform distributions and the more stable structures in nano and micro scales.