Ordered nano-scale dimple pattern formation on a titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V)

Due to the many applications of nanostructured surfaces – including in biomaterials – there is a strong interest in cost- and time-efficient methods for their fabrication. Previously, our group established a simple electrochemical method generating nanoscale patterns on large areas of a number of different metal surfaces. They consist of dimples that are around 6-10 nm deep and hexagonally closed packed with a tunable periodicity of around 50 nm. Ordering requires careful tuning of the surface chemistry, which makes the translation of these findings to multi-component alloys non-obvious. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that such a pattern can also be achieved on the surface of an alloy, namely Ti-6Al-4V. This alloy is of particular interest for biomedical implants. While dimple formation on the main component metals titanium and aluminum has previously been reported (albeit under conditions that differ from each other), we now also report dimple formation on pure vanadium surfaces to occur under very different conditions. Dimple formation occurs preferentially on the (dominant) α-phase grains of the alloy. The size of dimples of the alloy material is subject to the electropolishing potential, electrolyte concentration and surface chemical composition, which gives us the opportunity to control the surface features. Since a main application of this alloy are biomedical implants, this level of control will be an important tool for accommodating cell growth.