Enhancing Corrosion Resistance of Stainless Steel 316 LVM by Various Surface Modifications in Biomedical Devices

Abstract

Stainless steel is one of the major components for human body implantations which has been utilized to replace bones and stents in human organs. It has been engineered to be corrosion resistance. However, they can still suffer from pitting corrosion. In this study, in order to enhance the corrosion resistance of stainless steel 316 LVM, three various types of surface modifications were used to test the corrosion performance of this alloy in a simulated biomedical device with 0.9 % NaCl solutions. In situ surface observation, which is associated with optical microscopy, were performed to analyses the samples surfaces before and after corrosion. Ex situ observations with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used to study the difference in sample features and chemical compositions before and after corrosion.