A Study of ZrN/Zr Coatings Deposited on NiTi Alloy by PIIID Technique

Abstract—ZrNx/Zr ceramic/metal coatings were deposited onto NiTi shape-memory alloy using plasma immersion ion im-plantation and deposition technique in order to prolong the ser-vice lifetime of NiTi implants in clinical application. The surface characteristics and microstructure were investigated by atomic force microscope, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray photoelectron spectrometry. The results showed that the coating surface has a mean roughness of 7.487 nm and root-mean-square roughness of 9.065 nm over the area the image and a cubic face-centered lattice of NaCl-type ZrN0.83 coating was obtained. The electrochemi-cal test demonstrated that the ZrN0.83/Zr coating can greatly improved the corrosion-resistant property in Hank’s solution, which has a great significance for the biomedical application of NiTi alloy. Index Terms—Coating, corrosion resistance, NiTi alloy, ZrN