Engineering of multilayered coating on additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V porous implants to promote tribological and fatigue performances

Despite the numerous advantages of additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V porous implants surface modified by plasma electrolyte oxidation (PEO) coatings in biomedical applications, several challenges still persist regarding their tribological and fatigue performances. To address these challenges, this study aims to engineer an innovative multilayered coating based on physical vapor deposited (PVD) Nb/NbN coatings on PEO-treaded Ti-6Al-4V porous implants. Three configurations of Nb/NbN coatings, including one, two, and three PVD layers were deposited on PEO-treated Ti-6Al-4V implants to simultaneously assess the effects of both increased coating thickness and configuration on the surface topography and mechanical performances of Ti-6Al-4V implants. Results showed that increasing the thickness and number of coatings changed the surface morphology and reduced the surface roughness. The PVD/PEO treatment demonstrated enhanced wear resistance of Ti-6Al-4V samples compared to the PEO treatment, depending on the coating conditions. Noticeably, the samples with 2 Nb/NbN layers exhibited the highest wear resistance and decreased the wear rate by 90 % compared to the Ti-6Al-4V samples. Although PEO treatment resulted in a decrease in fatigue life, the deposition of Nb/NbN coatings, especially those with 2 and 3 layers, markedly improved fatigue resistance compared to the PEO-treated samples. These modified samples attained approximately 81 % and 84 % of the fatigue life of the not-treated Ti-6Al-4V samples, respectively. Overall, the deposition of multilayered PVD Nb/NbN coatings on PEO-treated Ti-6Al-4V implants demonstrated an effective improvement in wear resistance while maintaining acceptable fatigue life under cyclic loading, making it promising for biomedical implants.