A Study on the Effect of Calcium Composition at Magnesium Alloy Degradation Rate

Recently, magnesium and its alloys have been recognized as a suitable degradable biomaterial. The degradability of magnesium alloy is one of the important contribution aspects in medical devices applications. It has natural ability to degrade due to corrosion when it is placed in aqueous solutions. Degradable magnesium alloy is one of the most practical medical devices that adopting this application concept. This report investigated the importance of magnesium alloy degradation in human body. Calcium composition was varied to change the degradation time for each sample. Longer degradation time is desirable for the application as stent method in stroke treatment. Several calcium compositions between 0 to 2 wt% are used to produce Mg-Zn-Ca alloy. Method of alloy fabrication, corrosion test technique and surface morphology analysis of magnesium alloy is presented in this report. The result obtained from this research is Mg-Zn-1wt%Ca having the lowest corrosion rate of 1.87 mm/year as compared to Mg-Zn-0wt%Ca and Mg-Zn-2wt%Ca which having corrosion rate of 2.12 mm/year and 3.56 mm/year respectively. Thus, Mg-Zn-1wt%Ca can be implemented as degradable implant as it has high corrosion resistance among other tested samples.