High recoverable strain tailoring by Zr adjustment of sintered Ti-13Nb-(0-6)Zr biomedical alloys.

Ti-13Nb-(0-6)Zr alloys were fabricated by conventional powder metallurgy sintering method. Their microstructure, phase transformation temperature and mechanical properties were investigated by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry and compression test. It was found that with more Zr addition, the content of β phase increased while the content of precipitated α phase reduced. With 1 at% Zr increase, the Ms of Ti-13Nb-(0~6)Zr alloys decreased linearly by around 10°C. The compression test results revealed that sintered Ti-13Nb-2Zr owned a recoverable strain as high as 3.7% at room temperature, and Ti-13Nb-4Zr and Ti-13Nb-6Zr exhibited a remarkable recoverable strain of 4.4% at their Ms temperature which was lower than room temperature, indicating that these two alloys have a higher intrinsic recoverable strain and may be further optimized.