Electrophoretic Deposition of Hydroxyapatite and 58S Bioactive Glass Coatings on the Ti6Al4V Alloy Subjected to Surface Mechanical Attrition Treatment

Hydroxyapatite (HAP) and 58S Bioactive Glasses (BG) coatings are successfully synthesized by Electrophoretic Deposition (EPD) on Ti6Al4V alloy subjected to Surface Mechanical Attrition Treatment (SMAT). This process uses steel balls impacts on the Ti6Al4V surface to improve its mechanical properties. However when the Ti6Al4V substrate is treated by SMAT the industrial plasma spray technique is not efficient to obtain adherent HAP coatings. This problem is mainly related to the modifications of the Ti6Al4V surface topography due to the SMAT process. Therefore, in this work we demonstrate that EPD offers an efficient solution to solve this technical problem. Indeed we obtain a homogeneous and adherent HAP coating on the SMATed Ti6Al4V surface from a suspension of nanoparticles in ethanol. Moreover EPD is successfully employed to produce a 58S BG coating on the SMATed Ti6Al4V surface. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) associated to Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDXS) reveals that the coatings obtained by EPD are adherent and compact without alteration of their chemical composition.