An approximation of tribological behavior of Ti1¡xAlxN coatings against animal bone in ringer's solution

Several kinds of alloys are available for biomedical ap-plications based on titanium, nickel, aluminum, vanadium,chromium, zirconium, etc., approved by ASTM. However,some disadvantages are encountered with these alloys, be-cause they mechanically destroy the normal bone with whichthey come in contact, causing allergy and inflammation dueto abrasive particles and leached toxic ions [1]. Taking intoaccount that the surface properties govern the material per-formance in this kind of applications, the modification of thesurface of biomedical alloys to improve tribological proper-ties could be considered as a solution. Ti-Al-N coatings seemto be an excellent material for this field, due to its excellentin vivo [2] and in vitro [3] biocompatibility, desirable electro-chemical properties in simulated body fluids [2,4] and goodmechanical behavior [5].Considering that the application of this coating onto thesurface of implants fixtures needs further investigation, thepurpose of this work is to study the effect of atomic alu-minum content,