Improvement of Ionic Bonding Strength and Electrochemical Corrosion Resistance of Hydroxyapatite- Calcium Phosphate Pulsed Electrochemically Deposited In-Situ Coating Through Hydroxyl Ion Treatment

Hydroxyl ion treatment of different hydroxyapatite-calcium hydrogen phosphate composite in-situ coatings synthesized through pulsed electro-deposition with varying amount of hydroxyapatite phase and degree of crystallinity were carried out with the help of highly basic solution in order to achieve a more chemically stable and corrosion resistance performance under contact with body fluid. The coatings exhibit altogether completely different behaviour in terms of bond formation, surface topography generation, phase transformation and corrosion behaviour. Detailed characterizations of formed top surface layer were carried out with the help of XRD, SEM and FTIR in order to correlate the results with their base surface characteristics. Transformation of <020> and <121> surface parallel planes of calcium hydrogen phosphate in to <002> and <112> planes of hydroxyapatite took place in all the coatings along with formation of nano-crystalline structure. Calcium-rich porous hydroxyapatite scaffold formation takes place in low current density coating which in general exhibits low stability in terms of chemical bonding strength vis-à-vis corrosion protection performance. 10 mA/cm² coating, which come with optimum presence of hydroxyapatite phase and crystallinity post electro-deposition, showed significant improvement in terms of increasing hydroxyl and phosphate bond polarization strength of hydroxyapatite phase and the same lead to improvement in the overall corrosion resistance performance of the coating by two times. Despite of formation of highest amount of hydroxyapatite phase during hydroxyl ion treatment in 20 mA/cm² coatings, the corrosion protection performance results are negative on account of dilution of mostly low bonding amorphous phases with high internal residual stress.