Abstract

ABSTRACT Apart from ceramics, polymers, and composites, metallic materials rank distinguished in the field of biomaterials. Recently, titanium based materials are attracting much interest as implantable materials because of their superior corrosion resistance, superior mechanical properties such as remarkably high specific strength, low elastic modulus, and the greatest biocompatibility compared to other competing biomaterials like stainless steel, Co-Cr alloys and nitinol alloys. Implantable Ti based materials must have high corrosion resistance to withstand the degradation which results from the reactions with the hostile body environment and does not result in adverse biological troubles in the body. At the same time, Ti materials must be stable and retain their properties for a long time reliably. This review discusses the important of Ti based materials as biomaterials from the point of view of corrosion science. The present article discusses various issues associated with biological corrosion of various categories of Ti materials which can be of use in different areas of clinical applications. The importance of creation of stable, compact and continuous oxide layers on the surface of Ti materials has been strongly effective to combat corrosion in aggressive body fluid. In this review, extensive efforts have been made to accumulate the effect of thermal and thermomechanical processing on corrosion resistance of biomedical titanium alloys. This paper concentrates its interest mainly on the evolution, evaluation and development of effective microstructural features that can improve corrosion properties of bio grade titanium materials via using thermal and thermomechanical treatments.