Corrosion and Protection of Surgical and Dental Metallic Implants

Summary

Corrosion resistance of metals and alloys can be enhanced by protective coatings or by special alloying additives. In this paper the protection efficiency of Al₂O₃ coatings, deposited by RF sputtering onto NiCr and CoCr alloys, is tested. An intermedialy layer of Al₂O₃ cermet is deposited and this enables the stresses at the interface metal-coating to be reduced. Electrochemical studies, in different biological media (synthetical blood plasma and artifical saliva) are performed. The potentiodynamic current potential curves analysis is carried out. Using the faradic currents amplitude, the corrosion resistance of different metals and also the efficiency of the protective coating can be rapidly and simply tested.