Plasma Electrolytic Polishing of Porous Nitinol Structures

Abstract

In this study, for the first time, the application of plasma electrolytic polishing (PEP) of porous Nitinol structures, mimicking a trabecular bone structure, that were additively manufactured, is reported. The cube-shaped samples were polished in a diagonal position three different times. The effect of PEP was evaluated in terms of the polishing depth, the effect on sample chemical composition and a possible shift of the phase transition temperature using microscopy, the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) techniques, respectively. The obtained results demonstrated that the PEP technique is suitable for polishing porous structures up to a certain depth into the sample inner structure and does not have any influence on the chemical composition and the phase transformation temperatures. However, small changes in the specific enthalpy were observable among the investigated samples. These changes could be attributed to the sample chemical inhomogeneity, measurement error, and/or differences in sample size and shape.

Keywords

• Nitinol
• additive manufacturing
• plasma electrolytic polishing
• phase change
• porous structures