Affiliations: CREB, Dept. Ciencia de Materiales e Ingeniería Metalúrgica, E.T.S.I.I.B., Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Barcelona, Spain | Clínica Dental Dra. Canedo L' Hospitalet del Llobregat, Spain | Instituto Padrós, Barcelona, Spain | Clínica Ares, Sant Cugat del Vallés, Barcelona, Spain | Area de Biomateriales, Prótesis e Implantología, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salut, Universidad Internacional de Cataluña, Sant Cugat del Vallés, Spain
Note: [] Corresponding author: F.J. Gil, Dept. Ciencia de los Materiales e Ingeniería Metalúrgica, E.T.S.Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. Tel.: 34 3 4016708; Fax: 34 3 4016706; E‐mail: gil@cmem.upc.es.
Abstract: The fretting corrosion of five materials for implant suprastructures (cast‐titanium, machined‐titanium, gold alloy, silver–palladium alloy and chromium–nickel alloy), was investigated in vitro, the materials being galvanically coupled to a titanium ball‐and‐socket‐joint with tetrafluoroethylene under mechanical load. Various electrochemical parameters (Ecorr, icorr, Evans diagrams, polarization resistance and Tafel slopes) were analyzed. The microstructure of the different dental materials was observed before and after corrosion processes by optical and electron microscopy. It can be observed that the mechanical load produces an important decrease of the corrosion resistance. The cast and machined titanium had the most passive current density at a given potential and chromium–nickel alloy had the most active critical current density values. The high gold content alloys have excellent resistance corrosion, although this decreases when the gold content is lower in the alloy. The palladium alloy had a low critical current density due to the presence of gallium in this composition but a selective dissolution of copper‐rich phases was observed through energy dispersive X‐ray analysis.
