Abstract: Titanium and its alloys are currently considered as one of the most important metallic materials used in the biomedical applications, due to their excellent mechanical properties and superior biocompatibility. In the present study, a new effective method for fabricating high porosity titanium alloy scaffolds was developed. Porous Ti-6Al-4V scaffolds are successfully fabricated with porosities ranging from 30% to 70% using space-holder and powder sintering technique. Based on its acceptable properties, spherical carbamide particles with different diameters (0.56, 0.8, and 1 mm) were used as the space-holder material in the present investigation. The Ti-6Al-4V scaffolds porosity is characterized by using scanning electron microscopy. The results show that the scaffolds spherical-shaped pores are depending on the shape, size and distribution of the space-holder particles. This investigation shows that the present new manufacturing technique is promising to fabricate a controlled high porosity and high purity Ti-6Al-4V scaffolds for hard tissue replacement.

Key words: Ti-6Al-4V, Porous material, Powder metallurgy, Space-holder