The Study on the Anti-corrosion Performance of NiTi Alloy in Human Body Solution with the Fabricating Processes of Laser Irradiation and PDMS Modification

This paper presents a new and safe method of fabricating super-hydrophobic surface on NiTi Shape Memory Alloy (SMA), which aims to further improve the corrosion resistance performance and biocompatibility of NiTi SMA. The super-hydrophobic surfaces with Water Contact Angle (WCA) of 155.4° ± 0.9° and Water Sliding Angle (WSA) of 4.4° ± 1.1° were obtained by the hybrid of laser irradiation and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) modification. The forming mechanism was systematically revealed via Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The anti-corrosion of samples was investigated in Simulated Body Fluid (SBF) via the potentiodynamic polarization (PDP) and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) tests. PDMS super-hydrophobic coatings showed superior anti-corrosion performance. The Ni ions release experiment was also conducted and the corresponding result demonstrated that the super-hydrophobic samples effectively inhibited the release of Ni ions both in electrolyte and SBF. Besides, biocompatibility was further analyzed, indicating that the prepared super-hydrophobic surfaces present a huge potential advantage in biocompatibility.