Investigating the stress corrosion cracking of a biodegradable Zn-0.8 wt%Li alloy in simulated body fluid
Guannan Li, Suming Zhu, Jian‐Feng Nie, Yufeng Zheng, Zhili Sun
Abstract
Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) may lead to brittle, unexpected failure of medical devices. However, available researches are limited to Mg-based biodegradable metals (BM) and pure Zn. The stress corrosion behaviors of newly-developed Zn alloys remain unclear. In the present work, we conducted slow strain rate testing (SSRT) and constant-load immersion test on a promising Zn-0.8 wt%Li alloy in order to investigate its SCC susceptibility and examine its feasibility as BM with pure Zn as control group. We observed that Zn-0.8 wt%Li alloy exhibited low SCC susceptibility. This was attributed to variations in microstructure and deformation mechanism after alloying with Li. In addition, both pure Zn and Zn-0.8 wt%Li alloy did not fracture over a period of 28 days during constant-load immersion test. The magnitude of applied stress was close to physiological condition and thus, we proved the feasibility of both materials as BM.