Pit initiation on biomedical alloys—A review

Abstract

Biomedical alloys, like many engineering alloys, have chemical or physical heterogeneities at the surface, and such heterogeneities can potentially act as sites for pit initiation. Alloys of particular interest are 316/316L (and 316LVM) stainless steel, nitinol, and CoCr alloys. This review focuses on the sites—generally inclusions—that have been associated with pitting in various studies of biomedical alloys in simulated physiological solutions. The effect of these sites is discussed in relation to factors such as type and size. For both 316/316L stainless steel and nitinol, pitting has been found to initiate at two different types of inclusions: sulfide and oxide inclusions in stainless steel, and carbide and oxide inclusions in nitinol. Sulfide inclusions tend to be the predominant sites for pitting on 316/316L stainless steel, while there is some evidence to suggest that carbide inclusions may be more effective than oxide inclusions for pitting on nitinol. CoCrMo alloys differ from the other two alloys in that, although particles can be present in the form of carbides, the carbides typically do not provide sites for pit initiation except possibly for alloys with a high‐C content, certain heat treatments, and when anodically polarized to high potentials. CoNiCrMo differs further in that TiN inclusions can be present in the vicinity of pits and might be associated with them, but irrespective of the initiation site, any pits are unlikely to grow because of repassivation.