The Fabrication of Zn-Zr Alloy through Centrifugal Casting and Box Furnace Method for Implant Application

Recently, zinc (Zn) is extensively observed as biomaterial or biodegradable implant for medical application. A biomaterial is any substance that has been engineered to interact with biological systems for a medical purpose. Zn is chosen because it has moderate degradation compared to Mg and Fe. Unfortunately, Zn has limitation on its mechanical properties that still low. The Alloying element is needed to improve the mechanical properties of Zn. Alloying element, such as zirconium (Zr) can improve the mechanical properties of Zn. In this study the addition of Zr with the composition variations of 0%, 0.5%, 1%, and 2% were used. Two kinds of alloying method used are centrifugal casting and box furnace with a temperature of 550°C. The aims of this study are to know the effect of each fabrication method to the mechanical properties and the result of Zn-Zr alloy microstructures. The results show that the microstructure of the alloy from centrifugal casting is more homogenous than the box furnace method. The mechanical properties of centrifugal casting are also higher than the box furnace method. The hardness value obtained from centrifugal casting of 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2% of Zr are 35.162 HV, 41.988 HV, 42.324 HV, 57.112 HV, respectively.