Amorphous Porous Phase of Nitinol Generated by Ultrafast Isobaric Cooling

Abstract

Titanium nickelide (nitinol) is of great applied interest in various industries due to unique combination of its physical and mechanical characteristics. In the present work, we consider the possibility of obtaining nitinol with mesoporous structure by rapidly cooling the molten sample to room temperature. Based on molecular dynamics simulation data, it was shown that the rapid cooling of the nitinol melt leads to formation of a porous structure. It was shown that the inner pore wall is formed mainly by titanium atoms, which provide biocompatibility of nitinol. It was found that the porosity of nitinol weakly depends on the cooling rate, while the porosity increases linearly with decreasing melt density.