Abstract:
The leaching out of toxic elements from metallic bioimplants has serious
repercussions, including allergies, peripheral neuritis, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease,
leading to revision or replacement surgeries. The development of advanced structural
materials with excellent biocompatibility and superior corrosion resistance in the
physiological environment holds great significance. High entropy alloys (HEAs) with a
huge compositional design space and outstanding mechanical and functional properties
can be promising for bioimplant applications. However, microstructural heterogeneity
arising from elemental segregation in these multiprinciple alloy systems is the Achilles
heel in the development of next-generation HEAs. Here, we demonstrate a pathway to
homogenize the microstructure of a biocompatible dual-phase HEA, comprising
refractory elements, namely, MoNbTaTiZr, through severe surface deformation using
stationary friction processing (SFP). The strain and temperature field during processing
homogenized the elemental distribution, which was otherwise unresponsive to
conventional annealing treatments. Nearly 15 min of the SFP treatment resulted in a significant elemental homogenization across
dendritic and interdendritic regions, similar to a week-long annealing treatment at 1275 K. The SFP processed alloy showed a nearly
six times higher biocorrosion resistance compared to its as-cast counterpart. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was used to
investigate the nature of the oxide layer formed on the specimens. Superior corrosion behavior of the processed alloy was attributed
to the formation of a stable passive layer with zirconium oxide as the primary constituent and higher hydrophobicity.
Biocompatibility studies performed using the human mesenchymal stem cell line, showed higher viability for the processed HEA
compared to its as-cast counterpart as well as conventional metallic biomaterials including stainless steel (SS316L) and titanium
alloy (Ti6Al4V).
