Preparation and characterization of porous titanium using space-holder technique

Titanium-based porous materials can be used in structural applications and medical implants because of their excellent mechanical properties at elevated temperatures, good corrosion resistance and wonderful biocompatibility. However, most of the methods used to produce the porous metal can only give limited porosity and uncontrollable pore morphologies. In the present study, a newly developed method of powder metallurgy using the space-holder technique was used to fabricate porous titanium with controllable porosity. The morphological features and mechanical properties of the products were fully investigated. The results show that the porosity is in the range of 55%–75%, and the mean pore size, with an average sphericity of ∼0.72, is 600 μm. The plateau stresses vary between 10 MPa and 35 MPa. As predicted by the Gibson-Ashby model, the plateau stress decreases with increasing porosity.