Abstract
Titanium is widely used in orthopedic implants as prostheses for joint replacement because of its excellent mechanical properties and biocompatibility. The present research aims to fabricate titanium porous scaffolds to promote bone or tissue ingrowth into pores and provide biological anchorage. A novel 3D modeling method is proposed in this work for controlling internal porous structure and outer shape. A piece of titanium sheet formed with micro powder, polymeric binder and organic solvent is sintered by Nd: YAG laser to form a 2D bone-like cross-section. These 2D layers each of 140μm thickness are temporarily laminated to build a 3D porous scaffold. Finally, the pre-laminated part is sintered using the spark plasma sintering (SPS) method. Space holding particle is one of the important sintering parameter during the SPS process. The experimental result shows that the use of NaCl space holding particle yields an excellent surface condition of the porous scaffold when it is sintered under a temperature of 630℃ and a pressure of 4MPa.
