Fabrication of Apatite/Titanium Functionally Graded Coating Using Supersonic Free-Jet PVD

Abstract

Hydroxyapatite (HAp) is very attractive in medical field. The objective of this study is to produce HAp/Ti composite coating with Supersonic Free-Jet PVD (SFJ-PVD). The SFJ-PVD is a technique to deposit nanoparticles with supersonic gas flow and to form a thick coating film. In a gas evaporation chamber, a source material is evaporated to form nanoparticles in an inert gas atmosphere. The nanoparticles are then carried to a substrate in a deposition chamber with an inert gas flow through a transfer pipe. The gas flow is generated by the pressure difference between the chambers and accelerated to the supersonic flow of 4.2 Mach through a specially designed supersonic nozzle. With SFJ-PVD, we obtain a uniform high-density HAp/Ti composite coating. XRD analysis reveals that the composite coating is composed of Ti and HAp. An in-vitro study was carried out to investigate the bioactivity of the HAp/Ti composite coating under simulated body fluid.