Titanium is a mature material for medical purposes due to its excellent compatibility with the human body.
Furthermore, titanium is extremely resistant to corrosion from body fluids, and is compatible with bone and living
tissue. Meanwhile, titanium has a relatively low modulus of elasticity, which reduces the differences in stiffness
between the human bone and the implant. This is important to the traditional application of titanium alloys as hip
implants and knee joints, but also to bone fracture plates and screws. A good and lasting connection of the implant
with the bone tissue is possible when there are sufficient conditions for the bone to grow into the pores of the
material. Therefore, the use of a porous implant with titanium coating may be helpful in solving this problem.
In this paper, shrouded plasma spray was used to lower the cost and produced low oxide containing titanium
coatings as titanium is a very reactive metal at high temperatures. A solid conical shroud was designed for plasma
spray. The titanium powders and coatings were assessed by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and
optical microscopy. An analysis in microstructure had been carried out, as shown in figure1-3. The results showed
that the shroud attachment played an important role in protecting the titanium particles from oxidation in flight
during the process of plasma spraying. An enhanced microstructure in the titanium coatings plasma sprayed with
the shroud were observed, as indicated in figure 2. The reduction in air entrainment with the shroud resulted in
better heating of the particles and increased in deposition efficiency and coating thickness. The dominant phase in
the titanium coating with the shroud was α-Ti, as presented in figure 3.