Despite their tremendous potential, Mg and its alloys are not yet used in biomedical applications. This book aims to provide scientific insights into the challenges of the materials, and give an overview of the research regarding their mechanical properties, corrosion behaviour and biological performances. The authors intend to put the reader into the position to accurate discern the proper Mg-based material for his/her applications and to choose the proper improvement strategy to his/her cause. To this aim, the manuscript is structured as follow: in Section 2, the main challenges hampering the use of magnesium in biomedical applications and the common improvement strategies are listed. In Section 3, the most investigated Mg alloys are reported in separate sub-sections, detailing their mechanical properties, corrosion behaviour and biotoxicity. High-pure and ultra-high-pure Mg, Al-based Mg alloys, Zn-based Mg alloys, Ca-based alloys and RE-based Mg alloys have been considered. In Section 4, the alloys' performances with respect to the challenges is summarized providing the reader with useful information and suggestions on the potentially most suited choice. Finally, in Section 5, an outlook portraying the authors' opinion of the future development of the field will be provided. This book will allow biomedical engineers, surface scientists, material scientists, implant manufacturers and companies working on implant approval an overview of the state-of-the-art technologies adopted so far to overcome the drawbacks of Mg for biomedical applications. Particular emphasis is put on explaining the link between mechanical, corrosion and biocompatible properties of Mg and its alloys as well as their pros and cons. In doing so, the authors intend to put the reader into the position to accurate discern the proper Mg-based material for his/her applications and to choose the proper improvement strategy to his/her cause.
About the Author: Mirco Peron earned his degree in mechanical engineering (summa cum laude)
in 2015 from the University of Padova, where his thesis evaluated the fatigue
damage and stiffness evolution in composite laminates. He is currently a PhD
student at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim.
His PhD topic deals with the optimization of mechanical and corrosion
properties of magnesium and its alloys for biomedical applications, with particular
reference to the corrosion-assisted cracking phenomena.
Filippo Berto is Chair of Structural Integrity at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology in Norway. He is in charge of the Mechanical and
Material Characterization Lab in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial
Engineering. He is author of more than 500 technical papers, mainly
oriented to materials science engineering, the brittle failure of different materials,
notch effect, the application of the finite element method to the structural
analysis, the mechanical behavior of metallic materials, the fatigue performance
of notched components as well as the reliability of welded, bolted and
bonded joints. Since 2003, he has been working on different aspects of the
structural integrity discipline, by mainly focusing attention on problems
related to the static and fatigue assessment of engineering materials with particular
attention to biomedical and medical applications and materials.
Jan Torgersen is Professor of mechanical engineering at NTNU, Trondheim.
He received his PhD from Vienna University of Technology, where he worked
on high-resolution laser microfabrication of hydrogels for tissue engineering.
He was pioneering in the work of processing hydrogel formulations at micron
scale resolution in vivo, in the presence of living cells and whole organisms.
He received a postdoctoral fellowship to work on a nanoscale vapor deposition
technique called atomic layer deposition, allowing conformal coating of
thermally fragile and nanostructured substrates with atomically thin layers of
a wide range of materials. He contributed to the development of a selflimiting
deposition process for high-k materials for Dynamic Random Access
Memory (DRAM) applications. His current research interests are micro- and
nanofabrication as well as surface functionalization, with particular focus on
biomedical applications.
