Effects of Heat Treatment of Selective Laser Melting Printed Ti-6Al-4V Specimens on Surface Texture Parameters and Cell Attachment

Abstract

Selective laser melting (SLM) is extensively used for fabricating metallic biomedical products. After 3D printing, it is almost always advisable to apply a heat treatment to release the internal tensions or optimize the mechanical properties of the printed parts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of heat treatment of SLM printed Ti-6Al-4V (Ti64) circular specimens on the areal surface texture parameters and cell attachment. Areal surface texture parameters, including the arithmetic mean height (Sa), root-mean-square height (Sq), skewness (Ssk), and kurtosis (Sku) were characterized. In addition, wavelet-based multi-resolution analysis was applied to investigate the characteristic length scales of untreated and heat-treated Ti64 specimens. In this study, the vertical distance between the highest and lowest position of cell attachment for each sampling area was defined as ΔH. Results showed that an increase in the periodic characteristic length scale was primarily due to the formation of large-scale aggregations of Ti64 metal powder particles on the heat-treated surface. In addition, MG-63 cells preferred lying in concave hollows; in heat-treated specimens, values of ΔH statistically significantly decreased from 31.6 ± 4.2 to 8.8 ± 2.8 μm, while Sku decreased from 3.3 ± 1.4 to 2.6 ± 0.6, indicating a strong influence of Sku on cell attachment.