Bioceramic Composite Coatings Fabricated by Nd-YAG Laser Cladding Process on Ti6Al4V Substrate

Abstract

Laser cladding technology was adopted to fabricate hydroxyapatite(HAP) and calcium phosphate compound coating according to the feature that a metallurgical bonding can be formed by laser cladding process. Compared with CO2laser, Nd-YAG laser has different wavelength(the former is 1.06μm and the latter is 10.06μm). Metal and ceramic material has quite different absorbance ability towards them and thus they can generate different laser cladding products by these two laser surface processings with different wavelength. This paper presents a new process and mechanism analysis to obtain bioceramic composite coating on Ti6Al4V substrate by Nd-YAG laser cladding. A bioceramic composite coating including HAP，Ca2P2O7，Ca3(PO4)2and calcium titanates and was successfully obtained by Nd-YAG laser cladding with pre-depositing mixed powders of CaHPO4•2H2O and CaCO3directly on Ti6Al4V substrate. Nd-YAG laser transmits mixed powders of CaHPO4•2H2O and CaCO3and the laser power is absorbed by Ti6Al4V substrate to produce a thin layer of molten region. There are mainly two kinds of chemical reaction systems in the coating during laser cladding processing. When CaHPO4•2H2O and CaCO3react together, they make calcium phosphate bioceramic products; The microstructure of the bioceramic composite coating is even and minute because of the rapid solidification in laser processing. A chemical metallergical bonding is formed between the boceramic composite coating and Ti6Al4V substrate. It can also be expected that Nd-YAG laser cladding technology can be used as a further modification procedure to enhance HAp/metal interface property.