Magnesium and Its Alloys as Implant Materials

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.