Pore Characteristics and Mechanical Behavior of Spark Plasma Sintered Porous Zn-Mg Alloy for Biomedical Applications

Porous Zn-xMg alloy scaffolds (x=5 wt%, 10 wt%, 15 wt%) were fabricated as bone tissue engineering scaffold by spark plasma sintering (SPS) using the same volume content space holder (NaCl). The effect of Mg content on the mechanical properties and microstructural characterizations of the porous Zn-xMg alloys scaffold was revealed. Results show that with the increasing content of Mg from 5 wt% to 15 wt%, the porosity increases from 40.3% to 54.3% and the mean open pore size increases from 289 mu m to 384 mu m due to the dealloying effect of Mg. Mechanical test results indicate that porous Zn-Mg alloy is a typical elastic-brittle metallic foam and porous Zn-10Mg is the best among three scaffolds. The strength and elastic module of the scaffolds show good biomechanical compatibility and is promising to be used as a lower load-bearing implant material.