医療分野におけるチタン適用の最前線

抄録

Titanium and titanium alloy have good combination of high mechanical properties and excellent corrosion resistance human body. So they have excellent properties for medical implants and medical devices.

The medical committee of the Japan titanium Society is supporting the activity that titanium and titanium alloys spread for medical application widely. It published the guide book of titanium for medical use, last year. The recent status for titanium application for medical use is described in this report.

World-wide demand of titanium for medical application was about 4,000～5,000 tons in 2017, it accounts for 3% of all titanium markets. In Japan, though shipment for titanium for medical use was 391tons, domestic use was 111 tons and it was only 28%.

Spine is widely used, and knee joint is follows in implant application.

Though titanium and titanium alloys are usually melted by VAR process, melting furnace to able to use recycle raw materials such as EBR or CCIM are recently used, too. Surface treatment to improve their bio-functionality has been actively investigated. Aluminum free low modulus titanium alloys researches to prevent bone shrinkages.