Surface chemistry of bulk nanocrystalline pure iron and electrochemistry study in gas-flow physiological saline

Conventional microcrystalline pure iron (MC-Fe) becomes a new candidate as biodegradable metals, which has the insufficient physical feature and inferior biodegradation behavior. Novel bulk nanocrystalline pure iron (NC-Fe) was fabricated via equal channel angular pressing technique in the present work to overcome these problems. The contact angle test with water and glycerol droplets shows a smaller angle (though >90 degrees) of NC-Fe than that of MC-Fe, which implies a lower surface energy of NC-Fe. The surface roughness of NC-Fe increased greatly than that of MC-Fe. A further comparative study of corrosion and electrochemistry performance between NC-Fe and its original MC-Fe was investigated in physiological saline with different dissolved oxygen concentration, aiming to in vitro simulate the corrosion process of coronary stent occurred in physiological environment. The electrochemical impedance spectra analysis and anodic polarization measurements indicated that the NC-Fe exhibited higher corrosion resistance than that of the MC-Fe; meanwhile obvious enhanced corrosion resistance with the decrement of dissolved oxygen concentration was observed. Related equivalent circuit model and surface reconstruction process were further discussed, and the degradation mechanism of the MC-Fe and NC-Fe were finally established. (c) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 2012.